The Boston area offers an interesting assortment this weekend as local favorite Kathy St. George takes to the Stoneham Theatre stage in the guise of the legendary Judy Garland (June 4-28), while two excellent productions - Grey Gardens at the Lyric Stage and Romance at The American Repertory Theatre - end their limited runs on Sunday. Dear Miss Garland, co-written by St. George and the show's 2009 Norton Award-winning director Scott Edmiston, comes hot on the heels of Stoneham's taut and triumphant adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train. Featuring a bravura performance by Robert Serrell as the flamboyantly sociopathic killer Charles Bruno, Strangers proved to be a chilling character study as well as a spine-tingling suspense yarn.
"Dear Miss Garland"
According to press notes, Kathy St. George fell in love with Judy Garland as a child watching The Wizard of Oz. She has had a fascination with her ever since. Her one-woman musical Dear Miss Garland, receiving its world premiere at the Stoneham Theatre this month, is St. George's "love letter" to the iconic star. The show includes both poignant and hilarious stories from Garland's life and career as well as the songs that she made famous in movies and on the concert stage.
St. George - who at four foot eleven is the exact same height as Garland - traces the incomparable singer's life from her stage debut as one of the Gumm Sisters to her comeback concert at Carnegie Hall in 1961. Between anecdotes she sings such classic hits as "The Trolley Song," "A Star Is Born," "You Made Me Love You," "Get Happy," "Chicago," and the all-time favorite, "Somewhere over the Rainbow." A performer who has been "doing Judy" by request at cabaret shows and benefits for several years, St. George decided to pay a worthy tribute to her role model in a fully scripted and produced musical complete with sets, lights, choreography, costumes, and a seven-piece band.
Tickets for Dear Miss Garland may be purchased at the Stoneham Theatre box office by calling 781-279-2200 or visiting www.stonehamtheatre.org. Price is $40, with discounts available for students and seniors.
PHOTO: Kathy St. George as Judy Garland
"Grey Gardens"
Local stage stalwart Leigh Barrett is giving yet another finely etched performance - two of them, actually - in the Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie musical Grey Gardens now playing its final week at the Lyric Stage in Boston. 
Based on the stranger-than-fiction story of two of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' eccentric relatives - Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little" Edie Beale - Grey Gardens depicts this decidedly odd couple's descent from 1940s East Hampton society to a life of destitution, isolation and inconceivable squalor as they share a dilapidated summer mansion with dozens of cats, raccoons, fleas, and their own twisted memories.
In Act I, Barrett plays mother Big Edie Beale, the frustrated wife of a never-home Wall Street tycoon who tries at every turn to stifle her passion for music and her bohemian ways. Self-absorbed to the point of narcissism, Big Edie wants nothing more than to sing on the stage. Unable to fulfill her career dream, she seizes any social opportunity to take the spotlight - even if it means ruining her own daughter's (Aimee Doherty) engagement party. When faced with the very real possibility of being left alone following Little Edie's planned wedding to Joe Kennedy Jr., Big Edie sabotages her daughter's future and seals their dysfunctional, co-dependent fate. In Act II, we see the mind-boggling result of their 32-year retreat from the outside world.
