Countdown to Judy

In week five of our countdown to Rufus Wainwright’s re-creation of Judy Garland’s show at Carnegie Hall, we check back in with our leading man. Among the latest developments is that Wainwright has had to revise his opinion of some of the material. “There were actually certain songs I hated,” he admits. “I was ready to announce from the stage that they were terrible but I had to do them anyway because they were in the show. But now I find that those songs are becoming my favorites.” He chortles. “I didn’t care for ‘Who Cares?’ and ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’ But now I’m finding that those songs are becoming my favorites, in a weird way. They were less obvious to me, and I felt I could add another slant to them that made me happy. And there’s other songs which initially I thought were pure camp that are actually turning out to be more musically profound, like ‘Rock-a-Bye Your Baby.’ If you hit a steady emotional current, you can recreate a turn-of-the-century sentimental beauty. If you do it with that respect, that Al Jolson reverence, it’s actually quite touching and moving. The song that’s still the most demanding is ‘The Man That Got Away.’ For one thing it’s the most famous; it’s also the most dramatic, and just fabulous. It is the towering colossus of the set. So that one is still at the top in terms of being the hardest but also the most fulfilling.”

But the ultimate challenge may well be to perform the whole lot, and in sequence. “When she did it, she was 39 and a drug addict, which I think helped at certain moments,” Wainwright says with a laugh. “I’m ten years younger and pretty fit right now, so I should be able to do it.”

To achieve the right feel for the material, Wainwright opted to do some rehearsals in a theater rather than a studio. “That was just two days of rehearsal in which I did whatever I wanted and attempted to exorcise the little showbiz demons spinning around in my brain,” he says. “So I basically was silly and childish, which was really good because there were certain things that worked. That was my Jackson Pollock rendition of a Judy Garland show. Sam Mendes has been coming to rehearsals and fine-tuning what I’m trying to do. I’ve been refining my vaudevillian sensibility, without becoming a parody of showbusiness.”

As in good showbiz, though, Wainwright is bringing in some guests. “My mother’s playing piano for ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ because I did that with her as a child, it was sort of our song,” Wainwright says. “I had her look at a Viktor & Rolf catalog today and it’s going to be interesting. She’s at an age where there’s certain requirements”—he laughs—“and she really likes to stick with them. So I’m going to have them talk to each other and kinda get out of the way. And then [sister] Martha is going to get up and sing one song—I’m not going to say which one yet. And we have a surprise special guest as well.”—Elisabeth Vincentelli

· Week 1: Rufus Wainwright
· Week 2: Stephen Oremus
· Week 3: Jared Geller
· Week 4: Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoere
· Week 5: Rufus Wainwright
· Week 6: Phil Ramone
· Week 7: Kate McGarrigle