Ingenue: Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland and the Golden Age of Hollywood continues at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, Edinburgh until 27 August 2022.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Melanie Gall knows all there is to know about Deanna Durbin. She’s just published the only biography of the one-time child star and MGM rival of Judy Garland. They were polar opposites musically; Durbin from opera and Garland from vaudeville, but as kids at the MGM school, they got along. So where will the conflict be in this story?
Durbin is approached for an interview just after Garland’s death and hints that the story will be about their friendship or lack thereof, but it soon drifts into a simple chronology of Durbin’s life.
The performance is peppered with the songs that made Durbin a favourite of the Hollywood Moguls (she was considered for Dorothy before Garland) and of armed forces, some of whose letters to her are heard in voiceover. They are sung well enough – ‘Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year’ is particularly good, but others are occasionally, a little pitchy.
What’s missing though, is an emotional connection to the material. We learn a lot about what she did, but little about how she felt. Changing her name to the “more marketable” Deanna barely registers. Her relationship with a 22-year-old man when she was 15 is dismissed with a shrug. A pregnancy where her choices were abort the baby or be forced to marry. She chose the second option, but the conversation with the mogul in voiceover, like all the other voiceover characters, lacks any drama whatsoever.
A pleasant hour with some lovely songs, but lacking in star quality.
Steven Wren
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