Theatre in Review: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (Circle in the Square)Audra McDonald has given us so many splendid things over the course of her career, yet none of them prepares one for the shock of seeing her as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. The conceit of Lanie Robertson's play is that we are in a Philadelphia club one night in 1959, about four months before Holiday's death. McDonald enters, looking sensational in a strapless white gown designed by Esosa; she launches into "I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone," and the very first note is enough to send a chill up one's spine. Gone is the astonishingly pure mezzo-soprano, with the distinctive vibrato, that is her musical signature. In its place is the nasal intonation, meticulous phrasing, and eerily detached manner, hinting at unspeakable pain, that were Holiday's hallmarks. If ever I have experienced a more astonishing vocal transformation, I certainly don't remember it. There is far more to McDonald's performance than this remarkable technical achievement. Consider the haunted eyes behind her smile, the faint note of anger underneath the most romantic ballad. And when she speaks, she disconcerts by rambling on about radio DJs who brand her "Lady Yesterday" and the New York City clubs from which she has been banned. Referring to her signature hits, she mentions "all the numbers I'm s'posed to sing before I get too juiced." Jimmy Powers, her pianist and musical director, tries to coax her back on track by leaning into the opening bars of a song, usually to little avail. This is Lady Day in her last days, addled by drug addiction, ailing from cirrhosis of the liver, her soul worn out from too many destructive love affairs and tangles with the law, and it quickly becomes clear that this performance will not go as planned. And, as the horrifying details of her life spill out, the wonder is not that Billie is unraveling in public; it is that she has made it to the age of 44 without imploding altogether. We hear about her parents' broken marriage; her early career in a brothel, which ended after a brutal encounter that left her bleeding; the lover who got her hooked on drugs, then planted his stash in her suitcase, leaving her to be arrested and sent to prison; and being denied help by her own mother, after setting her up with a restaurant of her own. She gets big laughs telling a story about being denied access to a bathroom while touring the South with Artie Shaw's band, but really it offers a horrifying glimpse of the indignities that she was made to endure daily. The more she reveals, the more she unravels: She wanders over to the bar and pours herself an enormous tumbler of vodka. Later, she wanders for a few minutes, then returns, one of her elbow-length gloves pulled back to reveal fresh track marks on her arms. And yet, somehow, the terrible pain gnawing away at her soul informs her vocal performances, lifting them to greatness. She offers a touching version of "Crazy He Calls Me," then follows up with a raucous salute to Bessie Smith, with a little item called "Pig Foot (And a Bottle of Beer)." Her rendition of "God Bless the Child," presented as an implicit criticism of her mother, is nothing short of magisterial, and she turns "Strange Fruit," Holiday's gripping ballad about lynching, into the distillation of a lifetime's rage at injustice. McDonald's stunning performance is the distillation of a hundred telling details. Suddenly, furiously refusing to perform a number, she slams the lid on the piano's keys. Talking about her parents' early marriage, she says, "Mom was only 16 and Dad was only 18," before pausing ever so slightly and adding, "And I was only three." Before our laughter has subsided, she has switched gears, revealing how her father, a gifted singer, lost his voice when he was gassed in World War I, a tragedy that destroyed his life. She works the crowd like a true pro, bumming a cigarette from one patron, a tumbler from another, but, under the influence, she stumbles from the stage, nearly taking a terrible spill. This sort of solo biographical play can be terribly artificial, but here, thanks to Robertson's superior writing and McDonald's volatile performance, the theatre audience is persuasively put in the position of that 1959 nightclub audience, wondering nervously if Billie can make it through the show. The entire evening benefits from the guiding hand of director Lonny Price, who preserves the what-will-she-do-next suspense while keeping the action from turning maudlin. (This production towers over Lady Day, another show about Holiday that ran Off Broadway earlier this season, not to mention the somewhat similar End of the Rainbow, the exploitative, hand-wringing Judy Garland sobfest seen on Broadway in 2012.) Helping immensely is a classy production design by James Noone, which adds cabaret seating to the Circle in the Square; the theatre has been further transformed by the addition of a number of deco details, including railings, hanging lamps, and a circular rig with green bunting. Behind the stage is a scrim that, when backlit, shows images of important people from Billie's past as well as various musical instruments. (The finely sensitive lighting is by Robert Wierzel). Steve Canyon Kennedy's sound design is a model of clarity and transparency. McDonald is backed by a trio of superb musicians: Shelton Becton (who plays Jimmy Powers) on the piano, George Farmer on the bass, and Clayton Craddock on the drums. But it is McDonald who lifts what might have been a glaring case of pathography -- Joyce Carol Oates' term for biographies that wallow in the ugly details of a subject's life -- into something very much like tragedy. (Interestingly, theatergoers currently have the opportunity of seeing Lady Day in juxtaposition with Satchmo at the Waldorf, the solo drama about Louis Armstrong now playing Off Broadway. Together they speak volumes about American jazz, a form of music defined by great black performers scarred by this country's legacy of racism.) Lady Day pays tribute to Holiday's artistry while bearing witness to the horror that she suffered in plain sight, with no one to save her.--David Barbour 
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