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Nobody can possibly be surprised that a show entitled \u201cJudy Garland Is Fat at Carnegie Hall\u201d is silly and in bad taste. What is more surprising is that the show works. I\u2019ve seen it twice now. The audience was rapturous both times, as the two lip-syncing Judy-dressed performers, whose drag names are Xena Fauxbia and Soda Pressed, riff off of Judy Garland\u2019s famous 1961 comeback concert at Carnegie Hall with an endless stream of visual fat jokes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cEverything I love is gone,\u201d one of them lip-syncs Judy saying, and empties the last few crumbs from a bag of potato chips. \u201cYou made me love you,\u201d both lip-sync one of Judy\u2019s signature songs to their microphones, which they\u2019ve each just used as an Ozempic pen, sticking them in their abdomens. They also guzzle pills from prescription bottles, engage in salacious behavior with hot dog buns and extra-long sausages, feed each other gobs of cake, flaunt their butts at the audience, and roll around on the floor amid a pile of shiny Mylar strips, in a kind of caricature of glamour gone amuck.<\/p>\n
I saw \u201cJudy Garland Is Fat at Carnegie Hall\u201d the first time at something called Edfest, a new preview festival that allowed New York artists to try out their shows in front of a live audience at a hip new venue called Brooklyn Art Haus before heading to Edinburgh.\u00a0\u00a0I was initially so taken aback by their jokey antics that I thought: How is this mess even theater? How can I possibly review it?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I eventually realized there is craft and even a level of sophistication behind the messiness. The voice-over that the two performers lip-sync are not just old recordings of Judy Garland singing or talking, but also of the performers themselves \u2013 whose real names are Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin and Adin Lenahan \u2013\u00a0\u00a0maybe creating fictional characters, or maybe talking about their own personal struggles. Sometimes Kaela is lip-syncing Adin\u2019s voice, and vice-versa; sometimes they lip-sync their own voices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0It might be hard at first, given the no-holds-barred humor, to see the sympathy that the performers have for Judy Garland, but it\u2019s made explicit during the only moment in the show that isn\u2019t lip-synced, when they ask each other what they liked most about Judy, and what they like most about themselves. They are revealing here their sense of personal connection to a singer who died 57 years ago, which any audience drawn in by the title is likely to share.<\/p>\n
The very silliness of \u201cJudy Garland is Fat at Carnegie Hall\u201d makes it resistant to straightforward criticism. But it also typifies a certain kind of fringe show (not just at the Fringe) that effectively creates a communal experience.<\/p>\n
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