The exclamation point in The Judy Show! serves as apt punctuation for Michael Holmes’s high octane parody of Judy Garland’s eponymous 1963-64 CBS variety series.  I caught a performance as he wound up his third smash winter/spring season in Palm Springs before he left town for his second summer at the Front Porch, Ogunquit, Maine.   His secret for keeping folks coming back week after week is his crisp wit and his improvisatory genius.  It is never the same show two weeks in a row.

The premise: Judy is taping her television show, featuring different guests each week, all played by Holmes.  Because it’s going to be edited, anything and everything can be said during taping.   Judy and her guests are frequently foul-mouthed but there is a sort of innocence about the vulgarity that is not off-putting in the least.  On this visit, I caught appearances by a droll Mae West and a riotously self-possessed Bette Davis.  Holmes also has Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead and Billie Holiday in his rotating rep company.

Audiences should be forewarned:  you may be part of this show.  Judy quickly spots “celebrities” in her audience – here a Barbara Bush, there a Mickey Rooney – and returns to them frequently with impromptu banter, which manages to be simultaneously impolite and endearing.

Standing quite tall in heels, Holmes is not an obvious Garland.  But he is a genius mimic as he nails the inflections, timbres, gestures and expressions of Judy and her guests, all the while winking at the proceedings as Michael Holmes.  He knows exactly what he’s doing and he does it smashingly.  It helps that he is a terrific singer in his own right (and in Davis’s case, a deliciously bad singer).

Good parody, of course, depends on exaggeration.  Holmes’s Judy is a vodka-swilling, pill-popping mess —a device that renders her nearly comatose after twenty minutes—while her guests take center stage.  She then emerges refreshed for the finale.  But he never uses Garland’s tragic addictions for a cheap laugh.  His Judy is having the time of her life getting smashed, and we laugh along with her, never at her.

Musical highlights as Garland included a breath-defying “Swanee” (Gershwin/Caesar), an infectious “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” (Warren/Mercer), and a vulnerable and heartbreaking “Over the Rainbow” (Arlen/Harburg).  A show-stopping “Ring Them Bells” (Kander & Ebb) featured four unsuspecting audience members whipping leather bell straps into a frenzy for the prize of a Michael Holmes CD.  Davis (when not exchanging blue one-liners with a spot-on Tallulah Bankhead), spit out “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” (De Vol/Merrill) with all the finesse of a truck driver.  To close the show, Holmes reclaimed his distinctly male persona with a deeply felt rendition of Peter Allen’s “If You Were Wondering.”

Musical Director Joel Baker provided rock-solid support, taking the vamp to an art form status and recreating vintage Garland arrangements with great panache.  A generous host(ess), Holmes/Judy took time after the show to pose for pictures with the entire audience.  I dare say several will return with friends for another viewing.

Jerome Elliott
Cabaret Scenes
May 8, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org