Billie Holiday sings again at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Deidrie Henry’s searing tour-de-force star turn in Lanie Robertson’s Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill.

It’s March of 1959, just four months before Holiday, known far and wide as “Lady Day,” was to die of cirrhosis and heart failure the age of forty-four.

Though hardly overjoyed about this return visit to Philadelphia, the city that tried and imprisoned her for possession of drugs that weren’t even hers, a reluctant Billie allows herself to be persuaded by accompanist Jimmy Powers (Abdul Hamid Royal) to step back on stage and serenade audiences with a voice done no favors by years of booze and smack but still capable of eliciting more than its fair share of chills.

In tried-and-true bio-concert play tradition, Robertson’s script has Billie pausing frequently (if rather implausibly) throughout her fourteen-song set (featuring such Holiday classics as “Strange Fruit,” “Easy Livin’,” “What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” and “God Bless The Child”) to recount just about every key life-and-career moment that has led her to where she is today.

An overweight child forced by mama (aka “The Duchess”) to provide maid service to the whores and johns frequenting Miss Dean’s cat house, Billie was exposed at an early age to the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, singers whose distinctive styles helped an aspiring singer forge one of her own.

Then came Sonny Monroe (“He wasn’t my best love, but he was my first. He was also the worst one I ever had.”) who got Billie hooked on heroin, then convinced her to tell the cops that the powder hidden in her suitcase was hers, not his, thereby getting Billie sent to jail for a year and a day, a prison stay that ended up costing her the cabaret card that would have allowed her to resume performing in bars round town.

Not that club dates in the deep south had been any picnic for a black singer touring with Artie Shaw’s otherwise all-white band, as when a southern club owner refused to grant Billie restroom access and ended up ruing the day she met Lady Day.

All of this, Billie recounts with humor and not an iota of self-pity, though when the memories get too tough, only an offstage drug recharge and a pet pooch to hug can help get Day through night.

Having already played Billie up in Portland last year, Henry steps masterfully into not just Miss Holiday’s shoes but those of such illustrious Emeeson’s Bar & Grill predecessors as Lonette McKee, Eartha Kitt, and Audra McDonald.

Body bent but not beaten, voice damaged but not yet destroyed, and directed to perfection by Gregg T. Daniel, Henry commands the Garry Marshall stage like nobody’s business, seducing the audience with Billie’s signature pipes, and when a powerful coda allows us to see Lady Day in her long-lost radiance, expect chills to run down your spine and tears down your cheeks.

Musical director Royal not only provides expert piano backup (joined by an equally fine James Leary on bass) but steps in from time to time to offer moral support as “Jimmy Powers,” and cuddly canine Ezer aces his all too brief cameo as Pepe.

Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill looks fabulous on its curtained nightclub set (Tanya Orellana is credited as “scenic consultant”), one that offers a couple dozen audience members onstage seating on either side.

Michèle Young costumes Henry in a ‘50s-perfect form-fitting white gown and matching handless evening gloves topped by Shelia Dorn’s elegant hair-pulled-back wig and a signature gardenia (courtesy of The Enchanted Florist), just one of John M. McElveney’s many props.

Tom Ontiveros’s appropriately moody lighting features a couple of stunning effects, one hallucinogenic, the other downright brilliant in both senses of the word, and sound designer Robert Arturo Ramirez amps and mixes vocals and instrumentals to perfection.

Giselle N. Vega is production stage manager.

Whether you’re a Billie Holiday fan or discovering Lady Day for the first time, expect to be spellbound by the divine Deidrie Henry and Garry Marshall Theatre’s powerful look back at Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill.

Garry Marshall Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.
www.GarryMarshallTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 22, 2019

Tags: Billie Holiday, Garry Marshall Theatre, Lanie Robertson, Los Angeles Theater Review