Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
Unrivaled Audra McDonald won a record-breaking sixth Tony Award for her performance as jazz icon Billie Holiday in Lanie Robertson's cabaret-style solo show, whose 14 songs include such Holiday favorites as "Don't Explain" and "God Bless the Child." Directed with restraint by Lonny Price, the show is a moving glimpse into the final days of a brilliant talent that was, by then, too frequently wasted. McDonald brings the pain as required and delivers Holiday’s broken-horn stylings with rough aplomb.
With her plush, classically trained soprano scaled down to jazz-soloist size, Ms. McDonald sings selections from Holiday’s repertoire with sensitive musicianship and rich seams of feeling that command rapt admiration. Although Ms. McDonald, a five-time Tony winner and an accomplished recitalist, has her own natural authority onstage, in this show, she submerges her identity in Holiday’s as an act of loving tribute to an artist whose difficult career exacted a painful price.
Holiday is as well known now for the grim travails of her short life — she died at the age of 44, her voice spent, her body destroyed by addiction to alcohol and heroin — as she is revered for the legacy of recordings she left behind.
- First Published: 1989
- Composers: Billie Holiday, Abel Meeropol,..
- Playwright: Lanie Robertson
- Lyrics Author: Billie Holiday, Abel Meeropol, Johnny Mercer,..
- IMDB Rating: 7.8/10
