McDonald’s superstar performance channels an intimate rendition of the jazz icon.
On Saturday March 12, HBO will debut a special production of the Broadway show at 9 pm eastern.
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill is more or less a one woman show about Billie Holiday. The whole one-act play takes place at the eponymous music establishment in Philadelphia in 1959. Over an hour and a half we watch one of Billie Holiday’s final performances unfold, a mere four months before her death. The two characters are Holiday and her pianist, Jimmy Powers. The show played at the Circle in the Square Theater, directed by Lonny Price and starring Audra McDonald and Shelton Becton as Holiday and Powers, respectively. The production was extended four times and earned McDonald the Tony for Best Actress in a Play, making it her sixth Tony and making her the only actress to win in all four acting categories.
The play is not an uplifting one. The first song that Holliday sings to her small audience is “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone” and it sets a relatively somber tone for the rest of her performance. The show does have its lighter moments though, as Holiday was a funny woman and McDonald manages to deliver all of her jokes in an authentic way. McDonald’s portrayal of the troubled icon is utter perfection. She modifies her tone, delivery, and phrasing to match Holiday’s unique style flawlessly, making audiences feel as if they truly are witnessing one of the last appearances of the ill-fated singer.
As the show continues, Holiday becomes progressively more unhinged and progressively more intoxicated. She stumbles about the stage and through the audience, pouring herself glass after glass and recounting tales from her past as Powers repeatedly tries to get her back to her set list. Slowly, every little detail of Holiday’s tumultuous life is offered up to the audience for scrutiny as she recalls her struggles, her success, and her stay in prison and ultimate downfall. While it seems unrealistic that so much biographical information would be recounted by a single woman, in a single night, during a single performance, it works anyway due to the sheer honesty of McDonald’s portrayal.
Despite Holiday’s obvious distress, the show must go on, as Powers gently reprimands Lady Day again and again. The feeling of watching a helpless woman who is so clearly over the edge is an unsettling one. We feel compelled to do something, say something, help her somehow. But the rules that govern the relationship between the performer and her audience prevent us from doing so. The moral of the story seems to be that if it is a more entertaining spectacle to watch a woman fall apart rather than to watch her get better, then we will naturally choose to watch the former. This idea rings true even today, as the documentary film Amy, telling a similar story about the late Amy Winehouse took home an Oscar just a few weeks ago.
The HBO special of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill was directed by Lonny Price, who also directed the Broadway production, and was filmed in front of a live audience at Cafe Brasil in New Orleans.