At the start of "Dear Miss Garland," St. George says, "This is my love letter to her." And it's that, too.
The first act of the two-hour tribute finds St. George in a stage dressing room, lovingly created by set designer Janie Howland with assorted costume dresses hanging on the back wall, a classic dressing table, and big French doors that magically transform from an entrance to a well-stocked closet of props and more costumes. There's also a trunk, of course - a natural for a performer who starts off by singing "Born in a Trunk."
The trunk comes in very handy, too, for the most hilarious part of the performance: a speed-through reenactment of "The Wizard of Oz," in which St. George dons a pigtailed wig, a witch's hat, a tin funnel, a lion's tail, and more to play each character in quick succession. Karen Perlow's lighting design, which is sensitively attuned to the shifting emotional tones throughout the show, becomes positively virtuosic here, with carefully selected greens for the Wicked Witch and, more attractively, the Emerald City.
As carefully put together and crafted as the entire production is, though, the focus remains exactly where it should: on St. George, on her marvelous singing voice, and on the songs and singer she renders with great emotional and technical depth. That focus sharpens even more in the second act, which re-creates segments of Garland's famous 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall.
For this act, the dressing-room set is gone, and pianist and music director Jim Rice is joined onstage by a small but elegant band. St. George enters, in a glittering silver jacket over black top and pants (just one of Charles Schoonmaker's attractive and appropriate costume choices), and proceeds to bring the house down. She's just Judy now, singing and talking with the audience as she did on that legendary night, and she's magnificent.
To hear these songs - "I Can't Give You Anything but Love," "Chicago," and, of course, "Over the Rainbow" - in St. George's richly textured evocation of Garland's style is pure pleasure. The show could probably do without the ethnic stereotyping of "Someone at Last" and "Sewanee," but other than that the song selection is exquisite, and Ilyse Robbins's choreography evokes Garland's original work without copying it gesture for gesture.
Most of all, though, it's St. George's deep commitment to the material and her deep empathy with Garland that make "Dear Miss Garland" work. With both affection and expertise, she does indeed write a love letter to Miss Garland - and, by its end, you may want to add your own signature, too.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.
