"After watching the electrifying, intense production that opened on Monday night at the Belasco Theater, you feel exhilarated and exhausted.In other words, you feel utterly alive. That's what comes from witnessing acting that is this unconditionally committed, not to mention this sensational - in every sense of the word...End of the Rainbow is a lurid account of the twilight of an all-too-mortal goddess on the eve of destruction and is revealing in a way that tell-all bio-drama seldom is...Tracie Bennett locates, both physically and emotionally, that perilous, bipolar energy that so often animates great performers. Touch this woman at your own risk. She burns... Every chapter of Garland's history is alive: she is foul-mouthed, flirtatious, hypersexual, childlike, unedited, manipulative and supremely self-conscious as she makes love and war with Mickey and Anthony. She has a strong sense of herself as a human tragedy on a world stage, but her sense of humor, of the absurdity of it all, is just as sharp. Some of her zingers are appallingly funny... And then she sings. And all those disparate, desperate elements

coalesce into a coherent, riveting whole."