Liza, Liza, Liza – Tabard Theatre

(left to right) Stephanie Ticknell-Smith, Felicity Duncan and Sabrina Carter perform in Liza, Liza, Liza at the Tabard Theatre, London. Picture: Phil Matthews

Liza, Liza, Liza continues at the Tabard Theatre, Chiswick until 29 September.

Way out west (London) there’s Liza, Liza, Liza, a hugely enjoyable new musical play by Richard Harris (of Outside Edge and Stepping Out fame) at the lively 80-seater fringe theatre above the buzzy Tabard hostelry next to Turnham Green station in Chiswick.

Using the clever device of having three Liza Minnellis at different stages of her life, all often on-stage at the same time, Harris gives us plenty of songs, back-stories that will be new to a generation that didn’t grow up with the iconic and troubled daughter of Judy Garland, a bit of dancing and prancing, and much humour among the frightening tales of drink, drug abuse, broken legs, strokes and hip replacements.

This tight 90-minute show, which seems to pass in a flash and would easily stand seeing more than once, deserves a bigger platform, maybe somewhere like Trafalgar Studios where, not so long ago, Tracie Bennett’s star turn as Minnelli’s equally off-the-scale mother in End of the Rainbow was such a hit.

Helping us trawl through Liza’s chaotic life – not that it was ever going to be anything else with a gay father and mega-flawed megastar mother – were Stephanie Ticknell-Smith as Liza 1 in her hopeful teen years, Sabrina Carter as Liza 2, the lady in her Oscar-winning prime for Cabaret and making all sorts of weird life choices including marrying a man who had previously gone to bed with her mother’s own gay husband, and Felicity Duncan, as Liza 3, who holds the piece together usually with a large Scotch in hand as a Minnelli full of spare parts and slurring her words a little.

The impressive and amiable Duncan acts Liza so eerily well that we soon get over the fact that she is a half a foot shorter than Liza 2, the statuesque Carter, who doubles as Garland, although we see only the back view of her in that role.

All three actresses can certainly hold a tune and Ticknell-Smith’s version of the beautiful ‘A Quiet Thing’, from the Kander and Ebb show Flora the Red Menace, which won Minnelli a first Tony at the age of 19, lights up Act I.

Of course, there are the old favourites like ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Cabaret’ as well and in the right corner of the stage, partly hidden, MD Neil MacDonald’s blissful piano work accompanies the three Lizas, while now and then weighing in with a word or two as one of her four husbands, the last of whom was the bizarre David Gest.

In fact, there’s not much about Minnelli’s life that isn’t bizarre and therefore everything that has happened to her is very much in the public arena, which is Harris’ main problem – how to tell audiences of my generation anything they don’t know and therefore create dramatic effect in the process.

Act II is stronger than the first. Colin Mayes’ design, a series of mirrors and panels, is as close to glamour as you can expect in the somewhat unglamorous Tabard surroundings, and does its best for a tiny stage where the audience is right on top of the actors. Phil Wilmott’s direction also takes the piece along at a lickety-spit pace.

Generous and sustained applause at the end suggested everyone had a good evening. I certainly did.

Jeremy Chapman