Oli Fuller
Drag meets body image in an hour of documentary esc. interview recordings being brought to life by Judy Garland and Judy Garland.
Judy Garland Is Fat at Carnegie Hall is a lip-synced recreation of Judy Garland’s iconic performance, interspersed with a thoughtful exploration of fatphobia within the arts industry and the stereotypes society uses to class plus sized performers as never fitting the role.
The vast majority of this show is lip-synced with the two performers, both playing Judy Garland, using audio of Judy Garland and others to create what almost felt like a performance art piece of a documentary about Judy Garland and fatphobia within the arts. However the lip syncing was often distractingly out of time and it was often unclear who the audio recording was of, which massively took away from the impact of the piece. Some of the voices were Judy Garland, and some of them were the performers themselves, doing a faux Judy Garland voice, and there were also additional other voices who were never identified, which made the piece difficult to follow and confusing.
The piece used Judy Garland’s legacy to analyse fatphobia within the arts, and filled the stage with food and chaos in its representation of that, however so much of the show focused on the shame and the struggle of being plus-sized in the arts, with very little time dedicated to the empowerment and learning to love your body, which was disappointing in a show that I was led to believe was all about plus sized empowerment. There was a moment at the end where the performers accepted themselves, ending the piece sharing a cake, and this moment was beautiful, but I wanted more of that. The show so heavily dwelled on the struggle and the shame that, as a plus sized person myself, I left the theatre feeling both hungry, but unable to eat, not only because I recognised that same shame, but also because the small moments of joy were unfortunately outweighed.
One thing that absolutely needs to be praised about this show is the prop design, with bedazzled bottles of slim fast, bedazzled ozempic, umbrellas full of streamers. Artistically, this show was camp and colourful chaos that I adored. I also greatly enjoyed the commitment to the visual gag of carrying round a wire and connecting whichever prop they last used to that wire to play the role of the wired mic for that scene.
This show is absolutely an interesting analysis of fatphobia in the arts, but is in need of further development in order to achieve clarity over chaos.
Recommended Drink: A bedazzled bottle of slim fast and a similarly shiny shot of Ozempic.
Performances of Judy Garland Is Fat at Carnegie Hall have now concluded at EdFringe 2026.
Eve Miller
