🎙️ Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill by Lanie Robertson

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is a window into one of Billie Holiday’s final performances before her untimely death in 1959. Zahra Newman stars as Lady Day, and we see the Jazz great recount stories of her life, perform some of her greatest hits, and slowly succumb to her ghosts.

I was surprised to learn that Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is not a new piece of writing. Lanie Robertson wrote this text in 1986, less than thirty years after Holiday’s death, but it didn’t reach Broadway until 2014. Less than a decade after that, it’s arrived in Australia for the first time, and I'm so glad for that.

Newman's performance as Holiday is hypnotising and carries the show. I was wary that a biographical, quasi-musical, solo show would drag but that didn't happen here. Newman embodies Holiday's spirit so wholly that I couldn't take my eyes off her. Her accent work was particularly enchanting, and never dipped into caricature.

Ailsa Paterson's lighting and set design go hand in hand, and the use of era-appropriate lighting fixtures on the stage are a highlight. Emerson's Bar & Grill feels real with the audience seated on stage and Newman roaming amongst them.

Kym Purling plays Jimmy, Holiday's pianist, and he too stuns as he plays a diplomatic and subservient caretaking role for Holiday. The relationship between the two of them, and the subtle push and pull that Purling and Newman elucidate is magnetic. We see his care and concern for Holiday as she stumbles further into drunken stupor, but the conflict between care and profit plays out in how he guides her on to perform and fulfil the pairs contractual obligations.

This dichotomy is at the core of the work. Holiday's later life was marred by vulture-like managers and partners who siphoned off her cash–leaving her with just $0.70 in the bank when she died. And so Robertson's text suggests that to get through that period she was forced to perform over and over the songs that had been her biggest hits, the same songs which came from the most trauma. The nature of celebrity and art-making is really at the core of the work, as we see a woman who was forced to remain in the past just to try and eke out a future.

It's a heart-breaking story which illuminated Holiday's life for me in a way I had never felt. A magnetic performance, sumptuous design, and a carefully constructed narrative come together to create an electrifying insight into the life of one of Jazz's greats.

Plus, there's a live dog!