Fifty years ago, I would have declined an invitation to a Judy Garland concert with prejudice, never mind that even then it would have required a ghost performance. She represented "old school" gay men who reveled in self-pity; get me to a disco where I could dance with shirtless men, or even a rock club where punks whose nihilist politics I admired were just about to wrestle center stage from the New Wavers. But my resistance softened over the years in the face of her enormous talent (the movies, Judy at Carnegie Hall and especially the grainy You Tube clips of her performing joyously with Streisand and Merman) though truth be told, her vulnerability still made me a little queasy when it became too intense.
All this by way saying that once I ensured it wasn't Seth Sikes who would be paying tribute to Judy at Carnegie Hall on the 100th anniversary of her birth year, I accepted Patrick's invitation to join him without hesitation. So what if I'd never heard of Jessica Vosk? Her theatrical credits seemed relevant and I guessed the crowd would make me feel young, hardly imagining that we would be seated several boxes away from Neil Patrick Harris who recorded the encore number on his phone. If only Patti Lupone had been there, too, to rip him a new one! I was appalled. Absolutely appalled.
Actually, Vosk has a voice as powerful as Lupone's but utterly lacking in Judy's expressiveness. It didn't help that the show included numerous clips from Garland's short-lived CBS Television variety series, which aired while my family was stationed in Germany (otherwise, I know my mother would have tuned in, as if to rubberneck at a car crash). To be fair, Voss declared she wouldn't be doing an impersonation and there's no question she knows her Judiana as well as any Garland fanatic, with the added benefit of a professional performer's insight. In fact, I enjoyed her deconstruction of one clip (that dress! the microphone cord!) more than anything in the tribute aside from Judy singing "Stormy Weather," uninterrupted, less than a month after the JFK assassination. Goosebumps, even a welling of tears--you go, girl, help the nation heal!
And that's the thing, I realized this morning what bothered me most about the tribute: Garland's performances were always about an innate desire to please the audience. Vosk really focussed more on pleasing herself. To her credit--or perhaps the enduring appeal of Dorothy Gale--she filled the house and sang her heart out, but in demonstrating the depth of her fandom and the volume of her belting, she obliterated the pathos that once made me so nervous and left no trace of Judy's essence.
That didn't stop her from getting a standing ovation, of course. Times have changed and Judy has been empowered in retrospect.
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