Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

''Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill'' is a musical with music by Lanie Robertson, recounting some events in the life of Billie Holiday. The play premiered in 1986 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and soon played Off-Broadway. The play opened on Broadway in 2014.

Production history

''Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill'' premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, on April 16, 1986, with direction by Woodie King Jr. and Reenie Upchurch as Billie Holiday.Robertson, Lanie
Script
''Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill'', (books.google.com) Samuel French, Inc., 1989, p. 5,

The play was next produced Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre on June 5, 1986, and then opened in a Vineyard Theatre production at the Westside Theatre on September 7, 1986. This production closed on May 17, 1987 after 281 performances. Directed by Andre Ernotte, Lonette McKee starred as Holiday. In February 1987 S. Epatha Merkerson took over the role of Billie Holiday. The play won the 1987 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Book (Robertson).

The Hollywood Playhouse (in California) produced ''Lady Day'' in October 1987, directed by Andre Ernotte, and with S. Epatha Merkerson reprising her role as Holiday. Ernotte said that he wanted to "deglamorize Billie: show the dark, sad side. So it's not so much a nightclub act as a theater play with music." He also noted that Merkerson brought another aspect to the role as an actress rather than as a singer. The play was presented at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut in November 2005, with Ernestine Jackson as Billie Holiday.

The play opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square on April 13, 2014. Directed by Lonny Price, the production starred Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday and featured Shelton Becton as pianist Jimmy Powers. The sets are by James Noone, costumes by Esosa, lighting by Robert Wierzel and sound by Steve Canyon Kennedy. The play was originally scheduled for a limited 10-week engagement, but was extended several times until it finally closed on October 5, 2014. Audra McDonald won her record-breaking sixth Tony Award for the production, and she became the only person to win in all four acting categories, this time winning for Best Actress in a Play. The play also won for Best Sound Design of a Play.

The 2014 Broadway production was filmed at the Cafe Brasil in New Orleans and broadcast on HBO on March 12, 2016. Audra McDonald received a 2016 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role in the broadcast.

McDonald was expected to reprise her role in the West End at the Wyndham's Theatre, from June 15 through September 3, 2016. She was to take a 3-month break from her role on Broadway in ''Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed''. However, in a change announced on May 10, 2016, ''Lady Day'' was postponed because McDonald and her husband Will Swenson were expecting a baby. She said, in part: "Of course, I’m disappointed I have to postpone my West End debut in Lady Day, but I look forward to rescheduling as soon as possible.”
The play was rescheduled, with McDonald making her West End debut at Wyndham’s Theatre from June 27, 2017 through September 9, 2017.

Plot

The play takes place in South Philadelphia in March 1959. Billie Holiday is performing in a run-down bar, during one of her last performances before her death in July 1959. She sings, accompanied by Jimmy Powers on the piano, and also tells stories about her life as she becomes increasingly intoxicated and incoherent.

Songs

*"I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone"
*"When a Woman Loves a Man"
*"What a Little Moonlight Can Do"
*"Crazy He Calls Me"
*"Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)",
*"Baby Doll"
*" God Bless the Child"
*"Foolin' Myself"
*"Somebody's on My Mind"
*" Easy Livin'"
*" Strange Fruit"
*Blues Break
*"T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do"
*" Don't Explain"
*"What a Little Moonlight Can Do" (Reprise)
*"Deep Song"

Critical reception

In his review of the 2005 Long Wharf production for ''Variety'', Frank Rizzo wrote:

...two-time Tony nominee Ernestine Jackson... presents the singer as a simultaneously strong and desperate figure who finds some solace in her songs, but more in her own personal “moonlight” of drugs, booze and memories. Jackson nicely suggests rather than mimics the famous Holiday deeply lived sound in a show filled with more than a dozen tunes accompanied by an accomplished trio. But this is far from a simple songbook, and the cumulative power comes in the unraveling of an addicted artist and her story at the end of her days.

Critics praised the performance of Audra McDonald in the 2014 Broadway production while not being as enthusiastic about the writing. In his review for ''The New York Times'', Charles Isherwood said,

it's worth putting up with the show's tackier (and duller) aspects for the pleasure of hearing Ms. McDonald breathe aching life into some of Holiday's greatest songs. She has tamped down the lush bloom of her voice to suggest the withered state of Holiday's instrument during the last years of her career, but the sound remains tangy, expressive and rich.

Marilyn Stasio

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