'Lady Day' endures: Mardra Thomas commendably conjures jazz great Billie Holiday at the Metropolis
“Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill” - ★ ★ ★
“Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill” - the bittersweet tribute to jazz great Billie Holiday running at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre - begins with voices offstage.
One voice pleads. The other hesitates.
“I can't do it,” insists Holiday, resisting the efforts of her accompanist Jimmy Powers to coax her onto the stage of a down-at-heel Philadelphia lounge where she is scheduled to perform.
So begins Lanie Robertson's poignant bio-musical, a fictionalized account of a performance by Holiday - nicknamed Lady Day by her friend, tenor sax great Lester Young - a few months before her death on July 17, 1959, at age 44. Moments after the whispered exchange backstage, Holiday (Mardra Thomas) emerges wearing a white tea-length gown, fingerless opera-length gloves, and an expression that is both anxious and reluctant.
Stepping up to the microphone and into the spotlight - the place where she truly thrives - she scans the audience and begins to sing, accompanied by the faithful Jimmy. Played by Reggie Thomas, a skillful jazz pianist and Mardra Thomas' real-life husband, Jimmy keeps the singer on track, nudging her when she needs it and making sure she sings her hits before she “gets too juiced.”
Over 90 minutes, Mardra Thomas carefully conjures Holiday - her wistful delivery, her vibrato, the languid phrasing and her singular timbre that recalls the saxophone, the instrument jazz players insist most closely resembles the human voice.
In addition to her hits, Holiday shares her life stories: the difficult relationship with her mother (“the Duchess”); working as a cleaning lady at a brothel; her discovery of jazz; and her reverence for Louis Armstrong and blues singer Bessie Smith. She recalls the racism she endured and the indignities she suffered touring the segregated South with Artie Shaw's big band; reminisces over troubled relationships with men, one of whom introduced her to heroin; and fumes over the drug conviction that cost her the cabaret card, without which she could not perform in New York clubs.
Throughout the show, she clutches a half-filled glass of alcohol as if it were a lifeline, one that begins to fray as the booze and drugs take effect.
A show like “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill” demands a sense of intimacy difficult to establish in a proscenium theater like Metropolis. But Mardra Thomas, under Anthony Sims' direction, draws us in with a performance that reveals - without self-pity - the humor, joy, longing, indignation and determination of an artist whose brief and troubled life yielded an enduring legacy.
That legacy is reflected in the breezy “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” which had audience members bobbing their heads; the contemplative “God Bless the Child,” which Holiday wrote for her mother; the cheerfully defiant “T'Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do” and “Don't Explain,” in which a wronged woman welcomes back her wayward man.
But the most affecting moments occur late in the show during Thomas' performance of “Strange Fruit,” the protest song depicting a lynching in grim, unflinching detail. Standing on a stage bathed in red, Thomas mesmerized the opening-night audience.
Her mastery of Holiday's vocal stylings, along with her sensitive acting, make “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill” memorable. More than a greatest hits revue, it is a portrait of an artist whose life was marked by tragedy, but who found solace in music and in the spotlight.
Location: Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights, (847) 577-2121, metropolisarts.com
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through March 12
Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $40
Parking: Nearby garage and street parking
COVID-19 precautions: Proof of vaccination, along with a photo ID or proof of a negative COVID-19 test required. Masking is mandatory.