Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Garry Marshall Theatre
Extended through June 9
RECOMMENDED:
Deidrie Henry delivers a soulful performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill, Lanie Robertson’s 1986 one-act about the late great jazz singer who died prematurely at the age of 44. While the production, directed by Gregg T. Daniel at the Garry Marshall Theatre, lags some and comes with few surprises, Henry’s musical portrait and the supporting instrumentals by Abdul Hamid Royal (musical direction/piano) and James Leary (bass) ultimately make for a stirring evening.
Born Eleanora Fagin in 1915 to an adolescent mom, Holiday survived a rough childhood, undergoing a sexual assault when she was 10, placement in a reform school for truancy, and a stint running errands at a brothel while still a child. She began singing in Harlem clubs as a teenager. Already a heavy drinker, she got hooked on drugs in her mid-20s, developing twin addictions that undermined her health and hastened her death. Humiliation, because of her color and additionally due to the fact she was an addict in an era of zero tolerance, dogged Holiday throughout her life; even as she lay dying, she was arrested for possession by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and handcuffed to the hospital bed (mercifully, her police guard uncuffed her hours before her death).
In Robertson’s play, Holiday, banned from playing clubs in New York because of a narcotics conviction, is performing in a small intimate club in Philadelphia. The time is three months before her death. After an introduction from the piano player and a moment’s pause, Billie enters, wearing a white dress and the long white gloves she always wore to hide the scars from her many injections. She’s slightly hunched, moves haltingly and appears intoxicated. But she has style.
The show then proceeds: a mix of some of the singer’s most famous musical numbers (Strange Fruit, God Bless the Child) juxtaposed with monologues in which she shares with us stories from her life — including the death of her father who, like Bessie Smith, failed to get timely medical attention because he was black and died as a result, and an incident in the Deep South when she was singing with Artie Shaw’s band and was smugly and callously denied access to a restroom because the club didn’t have one for black women. The latter is a horrifying illustration of the implacable arrogance of hate.
Wonderfully supported by Royal and Leary (who also engage in a brilliant instrumental number on their own), Henry renders her vocals with poise and skill. The stories she spins from Holiday’s past are relayed with the intimacy and candidness you’d anticipate from a gifted talent with few illusions left. She’s as persuasive as any performer might be. And her portrayal is beautifully enhanced by Tom Ontiveros’s lighting, whose subtle shifts in hue reflect so well the intricacies of one artist’s story.
Unfortunately, the play’s fundamental conceit — that in the course of an evening’s performance Holiday pours forth all the lowlights, many horrific, of her past — comes off as devised and too calculatedly biographical to be real. It keeps one from being swept away by the performance, despite its quality.
Garry Marshall Theatre, 4252 Riverside Dr., Burbank; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; Wed., May 22, 8 p.m.; extended through Jun. 9. (818) 955-8101 or www.garrymarshalltheatre.org/. Running time: approximately 95 minutes.
