“Lady Day” is all about the singing
Billie Holiday comes to life in production at Vintage Theatre
Mary Louise Lee is back in her signature role, inhabiting the autobiography and singing the songs of jazz legend Billie Holiday. ★★★5
Lee previously won awards for turns in the role in 2002 for Shadow Theatre Company and in 2016 for the DCPA Theatre Company. This time, her performance is part of an unusual coproduction, taking her to two Denver stages across several months.
Currently, the Vintage Theatre production of Lanie Robertson’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” directed by Betty Hart, is running through Feb. 18. The show moves to the Denver Center’s Garner-Galleria Theatre on March 5 and continues Monday-night-only performances through April 23.
The setting is the Philadelphia club of the title. It’s 1959 and Lady Day (Lee) is doing one of her last shows. She opens by explaining why she hates Philly, the site of her trial and conviction for drug possession, which led to time in prison and the loss of her New York cabaret card, which severely limited where she could perform.
Lee’s tone veers from angry to boozy, her language from salty to obscene, as she sprinkles dialog between songs. Lady Day explains that her strength is “a blues feeling with a jazz beat.”
Lee’s strength is her powerful voice, exuberant on the upbeat
numbers like “What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” sultry on “When A Woman Loves A Man,” and wrenching on the classic tragic protest of “Strange Fruit.” When she demonstrates her notable vocal range within a single phrase on “God Bless The Child,” or does a rousing Bessie Smith-style rendition of “Gimme A Pigfoot (And A Bottle of Beer),” she offers a winning night of cabaret-style theater.
She puts across the dialog but, really, she’s about the singing.
The facts of Holiday’s 44 short years are well known: Lady Day tells of the racism she confronted, particularly on the road with Artie Shaw and his band touring the South; she talks about her struggles with addiction, to both drugs and alcohol; and her dis- mal relationships with men and the poverty and abuse (raped at age 10!) that marked her turbulent life.
The American society that welcomed Lady Day at Carnegie Hall but barred her from using certain bathrooms still struggles with racism. As Denver’s First Lady (Mayor Michael Hancock’s wife), Mary Louise Lee reminds us that, in the era of Black Lives Matter, the fight goes on.
The structure of the play suffers from a certain streamlining. The storytelling, particularly as concerns Holiday’s heroin addiction, is less pointed than Audra McDonald’s Tony-winning version on Broadway (and on HBO). Here, Act I ends abruptly and Act II never quite builds to a crescendo. Director Hart has chosen not to include one stunning bit from that earlier production, when Holiday leaves the stage for a break, then returns with one long glove dangling from her arm, revealing telltale tracks. It seems a significant omission.
Trent Hines as pianist Jimmy Powers doesn’t just play; he talks with the singer, trying to keep Holiday focused even as she swigs gin from bottles on either side of the stage.
At Vintage, the first couple of rows are seated at cabaret tables, setting the tone and allowing Lee to interact with the crowd.
This isn’t the best example of dramatic theater in town. But the singing by a favorite Denver native carries the day.