Review: ‘Lady Day’ reminisces through the successes and struggles of Billie Holiday
.jpg "Janeta Jackson has gone from playing Mary Poppins, a woman who saves broken people, to playing Billie Holiday, a woman who can’t save her own broken self. Jackson stars in Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.”")
“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” has been called a one-woman show, but that’s a misnomer. It relies not only on the actress playing Billie Holiday but three talented musicians, a complacent dog and half a dozen phantoms, who flit around the theater as Lady Day walks us through her troubled past.
Lanie Robertson’s play gets some of its poignance from our knowledge that Holiday will be gone four months later at 44. She has already begun to succumb to booze — she died of cirrhosis in 1959 — and is probably feeding her heroin habit.
Yet this isn’t a pity party, as Holiday reminds us. She may be in Philadelphia, a city that has always brought bad luck, singing in a venue that wouldn’t have the audacity to call itself a supper club. But as she reflects on successes, failures and things missing from her life, she’s accepting of the past and hopeful for the future. One of the last things she says is how much she’d like a club of her own, where she can sing for “friends” like us.
Jeremy DeCarlos directs this one-act simply at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Pianist Willis Hickerson Jr., bass player Peter de Klerk and drummer Tim Scott step onto the handsome, art deco-influenced set designed by Chip Decker. After they riff on “Satin Doll,” Holiday appears. (The trio not only plays well but acts well: Watch their expressions as she ignores cues.)
She sings and shares memories for nearly 90 minutes, ambling among the audience with relaxed good humor even while talking about teenage years as a prostitute or the time she was denied access to a bathroom on tour with Artie Shaw’s band. (I wonder if Holiday could handle a crowd with such elan, even in her prime.)
When she suddenly bolts offstage, the band digs into “C Jam Blues” to fill the gap. She returns, probably after shooting up, with a dreamy expression on her face and her tiny dog Pepe under her arm. (The unnaturally calm Pepe looks like he also took pharmaceuticals.) She muses some more, sings three full numbers and a piece of another, then floats away. So completely are we under the spell of actress Janeta Jackson that we land with a jolt back in the present.
Jackson catches some of Holiday’s vibrato, note-bending and phrasing without attempting an imitation. She’s about 15 years younger, vocally healthier and far less physically frail than Lady Day was in 1959. So although she sings attractively, she gets under Holiday’s skin most in the monologues.
Robertson’s play has been criticized for cramming in too many biographical details in 90 minutes. Yet it seems natural for Holiday to reminisce, then sing songs triggered by memories: Recalling a junkie who challenged her to try heroin to prove she loved him, she segues into the mournful “Don’t Explain.”
She’s conversational when we first meet her, then sinks into a confessional mood. Holiday spent the first 25 years of her career merely trying to be heard by audiences. Now, after being jailed, vilified, denied employment and left alone, she’s desperate to be understood.
“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”
WHEN: Through Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday. In addition, these dates and times have been added: Feb. 1 at 2:30 p.m., Feb. 14-15 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 16 at 2:30 p.m.
WHERE: Hadley Theater, Queens University, 2132 Radcliffe Ave.
TICKETS: $28-$43. (Half off lesser-priced tickets for students, teachers, military and Queens University community).
DETAILS: 704-342-2251 or atcharlotte.org.
This story is part of an Observer underwriting project with the Thrive Campaign for the Arts, supporting arts journalism in Charlotte.
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This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 10:23 AM.