Presented by the Murfreesboro Center of the Arts, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill serves up a shocking, sobering Broadway musical featuring the music of Billie Holiday, influential American jazz singer and songwriter. The year is 1959. In a small venue in Philadelphia—the titular Emerson’s Bar and Grill—“Lady Day,” so nicknamed by friend and musical partner Lester Young, and portrayed beautifully by Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, performs many well-known jazz hits, including some of her own. Intermingled with her performance is the story of Holiday’s life: what she’s loved, what she’s lost and, most tellingly, what she’s still losing.
Backed by a small troupe of talented musicians, Ms. Whitcomb-Oliva brings Billie Holiday to life in this portrayal of the final months of her life. Boozy, addled and coarse, Holiday alternates between sassy, fun-loving brazenness and a vulnerable poignancy that’s hard and heart-wrenching. The setting is personal and close. In the small gallery of the Center for the Arts it’s easy to feel, with the draping curtains, crowded tables and sepia lighting, a veritable transportation to the classic jazz lounge (excepting, of course, copious blankets of cigarette smoke).
Whitcomb-Oliva captures Holiday brilliantly, channeling her thin, emotional contralto with precision and intelligence and no little amount of sympathy for an inarguably troubled talent enervated by drugs and alcohol. Summoning the at-times abrasive and belligerent Holiday, Whitcomb-Oliva truly shines in the quietest moments, where subtlety and depth drive the reserved atmosphere and slow pacing with tender longing and despair. It’s a one-woman show minus the occasional touching aside with pianist Jimmy Powers (Konson Rodre Patton), who leads an excellent jazz accompaniment. Even in its most garish moments, I have nothing but praise for the performance itself.
Watching Lady Day is witnessing the meteoric fall of a ravaged star. At times it is surprisingly funny and, despite its maudlin subject, it never truly falls into the realm of overly dramatic absurdity, though it rides a fine line. Laying bare the singer’s stormy, often abusive love life, her complicated relationship with her mother and her very visible struggle with the demons that haunt her, the play itself, written by Lanie Robertson, risks portraying a grotesque caricature of the doomed legend without ever really jumping the proverbial shark. (The Hollywood Reporter puts it somewhere between the Judy Garland play End of the Rainbow and A Night With Janis Joplin.)
If you are familiar at all with Billie Holiday’s life and work, it’s well worth seeing for the musical performances alone. If, however, you have never cared one way or another about her, this small, one-hour-and-30-minute play possesses other compelling virtues and is a charming way to spend next Friday or Saturday evening before moving on to something conducive to lifting your spirits afterward. The play has been extended to run through June 14, so this upcoming weekend is your last chance to see it this season.
Tickets are can be purchased at boroarts.org.
