Earthy, direct, and disdainful of conventional feminine roles from an early age, Billie Holiday’s reputation as an artist and an enduring icon of oppositional identity has only grown in the decades since her untimely passing in 1959 at the age of 44. In the outstanding production of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill running now through September 5 as part of PCPA’s Solvang Festival Theater season, Karole Foreman commands the stage as Holiday, giving a sharply drawn, deeply felt performance that’s unforgettable in its immediacy.
Lady Day at Emerson’s isn’t a musical; it’s a play with music, and it includes more than a dozen songs and an equal number of revealing Holiday monologues. It has been widely produced since it premiered in the mid-’80s, when playwright Lanie Robertson got the idea to present the singer’s life through the lens of one shambolic late-career performance. The location, Emerson’s Bar and Grill, is a small, run-down joint in Philadelphia, a city for which Holiday had a strong and understandable dislike. The time is 1959, just a few months before the singer’s death, and she’s in rough shape, both physically and emotionally. In between songs, Holiday banters with her pianist, Jimmy Powers (here played by the excellent Stephan Terry, who is also the show’s music director), and spills her guts to the audience. Apparently unable or unwilling to let go of a long list of grievances, Holiday rages and reminisces, expressing a wide range of mostly negative emotions, from anger at the undercover cops who hounded her out of being able to perform in New York City to disappointment with her mother, the “Duchess,” who struggled with her own demons and let Holiday down more than once.
This edition of ON Culture was originally emailed to subscribers on August 12, 2023. To receive Leslie Dinaberg’s arts newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.