Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill recounts Billie Holiday's life story through the songs that made her famous. 1959, in a small, intimate bar in Philadelphia, Holiday puts on a show that unbeknownst to the audience, will leave them witnesses to one of the last performances of her lifetime. Through her poignant voice and moving songs, one of the greatest jazz singers of all-time shares her loves and her losses.
Along with salty humor, joy, bitterness and plummeting despair, that sense of suffering as a constant companion permeates and elevates Lanie Robertson's slender yet affecting bio-play with music, crafted as a woozy late-night concert in the South Philly locale of the title, a few months before the singer's death...Watching such a consummate performer lose herself in the character and her music, it's clear there's not just diligent research here but also a profound empathy with the tragic struggle of Holiday's tempestuous life...There's an inevitable artificiality about so much biographical data being stuffed into a 'concert' performance, and Price adds to that informational aspect by beaming superfluous photographs and other visual aids onto the rear wall. But compared to the clunky Garland or Joplin shows mentioned earlier, Robertson's play incorporates his subject's background with sufficient economy to maintain the illusion of a spontaneous performance.
Under the direction of Lonny Price, the evening is a stinging portrait of a great artist's failed life. But even with deep admiration for McDonald's potent acting, the evening feels out of balance. The details of Holiday's story are already well-known, so it doesn't have the allure of revelation. (The same material was covered last year in the off-Broadway bio-musical 'Lady Day.') What the production does offer that's fresh, exciting and irresistibly entertaining is McDonald singing Holiday. Too bad the vivid evening wasn't more strongly tilted in that direction.
1986 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
1986 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2017 | West End |
West End Production West End |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Best Leading Actress in a Play | Audra McDonald |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Audra McDonald |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical | Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Audra McDonald |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Audra McDonald |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Sound Design of a Play | Steve Canyon Kennedy |
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