Theatre in Review: Lady Day (Little Shubert Theatre)The best thing about this potted biography of Billie Holiday is that it lets us spend a couple of hours with Dee Dee Bridgewater. A fabulous jazz singer with Broadway chops to boot, she thoroughly nails the signature Holiday sound, a ladylike wail on top with caged furies underneath. She understands Holiday's sly, sophisticated phrasing and the powerful undertone of melancholy that informs even the sassiest number. Whenever she is stage center, swinging her way through the likes of "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" or plumbing the dark depths of "My Man," Lady Day provides fine entertainment. Otherwise, this show is no way to treat a lady. Stephen Stahl's script bears an eerie resemblance to Peter Quilter's End of the Rainbow, which exhumed Judy Garland for strictly exploitative purposes. Lady Day is structured similarly, with the star in London, in desperate need of a career lift, misbehaving at rehearsal, and baring her sorrows so thoroughly that we wonder if she still has the stuff to make it through a show. The second act takes place at the show, with the star breaking down, weeping, and telling all to the audience, then pulling it together and triumphing with a series of socko numbers. If you can spend the down time between songs thinking about other things, you might have a very good time at Lady Day. The first act is overloaded with exposition, with the star arriving hours late for rehearsal, cracking jokes, staring hard at the bottle of gin in her purse, and moaning that her lover has returned to America, leaving her feeling unsteady and afraid. We are told, point blank, that she is persona non grata in New York and is completing a European tour designed to restore her reputation. There are some tasty moments, such as when Bridgewater insinuates her way into the insolent lyrics of "Them There Eyes," and in a powerfully understated "Lady Sings the Blues." But the show is afflicted with a severe case of flashback syndrome; during these scenes, Bridgewater is made to act (by herself) being raped as child, and, later, pleading for drugs, pumping her arm full of heroin. There are far too many scenes of her, in a childlike voice, begging for love. At such moments, the impulse to look away from the stage becomes hard to resist. It's not just that these scenes are alternately maudlin and lurid; it's that Holiday's tortured life doesn't need this kind of over explanation. Every note the lady sang was suffused with the sadness and fury that informed her life; her great achievement was to use these emotions, reshaped by music, as the stuff of great art. Bridgewater has all of this down pat; her rendition of "Strange Fruit," Holiday's stunning account of a lynching, is worth ten scenes of melodramatic bio-musical nonsense. The second act is similarly marred by a drunken Holiday having a near-breakdown topped off with more confessions. (It is here that she explains the incident with the law in Philadelphia, followed by a wild chase out of town, which has legally deprived her of the right to appear in New York nightclubs.) But none of these scenes have been written with any understanding of her complex and often self-destructive character; it's all a bid for easy tears, designed to make the late-in-the-evening numbers land big. Lady Day pretends to empathize with Holiday's troubles, but really, it salivates over them. Anyway, Bridgewater is divine, and she is backed up by an excellent quartet. As Billie's manager, David Ayers is mostly asked to stand around looking worried, which he does well. Rafael Poueriet is also on-hand for the totally dispensable role of a Spanish electrician who attracts Billie's attentions. Beowulf Boritt supplies a pair of sets -- a bare stage for Act I and an elaborate red-draped look for Act II; both are perfectly suitable for their purposes. Ryan O'Gara's lighting neatly contrasts a stark rehearsal wash with beautifully worked out chiaroscuro effects for Act II. The projections evoking Billie's memories, by the firm DIVE, are too big and overbearing; in Act I, they nearly erase Bridgewater from the stage. There are nice backdrop looks for Act II, but as this is supposed to be a recreation of a concert in 1954, why are there projections at all? Patricia A. Hibbert's costumes include an appropriately drop-dead-glamorous beaded number for Billie, complete with enormous white furs. Jason Crystal's excellent sound design guarantees clarity in even the most casual number. Lady Day pretends to be a celebration of Billie Holiday, and when Bridgewater is cutting loose vocally, the show makes good on that promise. But too much of the time it wallows in scenes of addiction and abandonment. Holiday should be remembered for her art, and if her life is to be made the stuff of theatre, it needs far more sensitive and perceptive handling than it gets here. Billie Holiday was one of the greats. Can't this lady catch a break? -- David Barbour 
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