Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

How much of it is director Lonny Price's brand new production, how much the keenly sensitive lighting by Robert Wierzel, the ingenious sound design of Steve Canyon Kennedy? Lonny Price's direction is so intuitive, so embedded it belongs to the star, the amazing star, who lives these last moments of Lady Day's life

Posted on April 10, 2014 by archive in Broadway, Plays

Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday in a scene

from Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

(Photo credit: Evgenia Eliseeva)

Beg. Borrow. Steal. In a breathtaking leap, famed Audra McDonald has vaulted past anything she’s ever done to this pinnacle of performance art, her portrait of Billie Holiday, the mesmerizing, tragic figure who haunts us still with the beauty and wreckage of her life, and if you don’t go to see her, you’ll be poorer for it. Because this is not only Billie Holiday, this is Audra McDonald at her consummate best.

I confess I was clutching my elbows awaiting her entrance. Would she be, could she be? There before us was the Emerson Bar and Grill, filled with drinking, anticipatory people at their crowded tables. Extras who paid for the privilege. They were far more civilized, far less smoky than the folks I remembered in the last place I saw Lady Day. There was the band vamping, silken jazz, far smoother than the band I remembered; here are Sheldon Becton at the piano, George Farmer on bass, Clayton Craddock at the drums, not the tired, frustrated, bored, resentful band men waiting for Billie to get it together for at least some of her stint. I was squeezed in, a standee, not even able to get to the bar. The smoke, the half light, heart pounding. And then, she was there. All in white. Hollow. Nothing behind the eyes, nothing behind the voice. Mesmerizing.

And suddenly, now, in designer Esosa’s slashing white gown, weaving past the bar, carefully upright, she is here. And the electricity is as if the years and the memories were one. It’s Billie Holiday. It’s more than Billie Holiday, it’s Billie Holiday at her captivating, effortlessly empathic best. How could it be? She was so close to her death, she is so alive. And the voice, her voice, but with her behind it, singing far more than the words, the melodies she made her own. Reaching out to people who were all there for her. As they always were. How could it be? How can rich, strong, vibrant Audra McDonald be herself and the wraith that was Billie Holiday?

Audra McDonald in a scene from

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

(Photo credit: Evgenia Eliseeva)

Because she became rich, strong, vibrant Billie Holiday, the Billie Holiday that everyone remembered from Billie’s early, hopeful days, that no one really could remember at all, just wished they did. And the joy of that! “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” – a complete kick in the ass! “Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer.” Alive!

It isn’t all the songs. Lanie Robertson has written an award-winning, chronicle-filled, bar patter of her life that Billie spills, even though she never spills a drink, not a drop, incidents, anecdotes filled with pain that she laughs away, jokes away, happily in her haze that keeps the wrath tamped down but now and then, it breaks out and the stories become too sharp and too long and Jimmy Powers, her man at the piano, who holds her together (that same marvelous Shelton Becton) pulls her into the music and gets her past her memories letting her drive her songs with the same thoughts, the same feelings. It’s so head shaking good. Of course, she has to perform her signature songs, a soul-drubbing “God Bless the Child,” a soul-searing “Strange Fruit,” half-unwilling, half-driven.

How much of it is director Lonny Price’s brand new production, how much the keenly sensitive lighting by Robert Wierzel, the ingenious sound design of Steve Canyon Kennedy? Lonny Price’s direction is so intuitive, so embedded it belongs to the star, the amazing star, who lives these last moments of Lady Day’s life, throwing in her jokes at Philly, her barbs at New York where they won’t let her perform any more to earn her bread, and although we know it’s because she has become so undependable, no one can know for sure if Billie will be there or if Billie will perform if she manages to get to her gig, or what explosion or “accident” will occur, no one wants to put on a horror show for the gawkers because under everything is the enduring love for Lady Day, a love requited at last in Audra McDonald and in spite of the tears, we couldn’t be happier. Billie Holiday isn’t that ghost any more, she’s here. Thank you, thank you, Audra McDonald. Rest easy, Lady Day.