Audra McDonald has won many awards in New York for her solo performance, a tribute to the great Billy Holiday (1915-1959), the legendary jazz singer and song writer, famous for her raw and expressive vocal delivery and improvisational skills. I have no doubt she will win many more awards in London as well.
Lanie Robertson’s script is billed as a musical play. It is in fact a cabaret performance with commentary on Holiday’s life and anecdotes. To create the cabaret atmosphere, the seats in the front six rows of the stalls have been removed and replaced with tables and chairs. The audience also sits at tables on the stage.
Lady Day was the nickname her lover gave her. Emerson’s Bar was a seedy joint in North Philadelphia. It was to be one of her last dates in 1959. Three months later she was dead.
The 90-minute cabaret is truly amazing. As Holiday sings so she becomes less and less steady and more and more rambling. “I am OK,” she protests. It is painfully obvious she is not OK. The audience is watching somebody cracking up on stage. She falls down some steps and the audience gasps, genuinely feeling she really has fallen, so convincing is Audra McDonald’s performance.
Macdonald is playing to full houses at Wyndham’s Theatre. It is distressing to learn that Holiday at Emerson’s Bar played to an audience of only seven people.