Tracey Conyer Lee as Billie Holliday (Photos by Matthew Schipper)
By Nancy Stetson
Life was not kind to Billie Holiday, but she persevered, channeling her pain into her singing.
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill puts her in her element: onstage at a small South Philadelphia club just months before her untimely death at 44.
This 1986 Lanie Robertson play is enjoying an extended run at Gulfshore Playhouse in Naples through April 27.
Part of its appeal is that we experience a Billie Holiday concert in an intimate, immersive setting. Scenic designer Marcelo Martinez Garcia has transformed the venue’s Struthers Studio into a nightclub, complete with cabaret table seating and a large working bar. (There’s still regular bleacher seating behind the small round tables on the main floor.)
Two walls boast concert posters and photos of other performers such as Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Holiday herself. The small stage barely contains room for Holiday and her two accompanists, Jimmy Powers (pianist and musical director Levi Barcourt) and an unnamed upright bass player (JR Erb.) Hats off to Gulfshore Playhouse for creatively changing the space (and seating) with each new play it presents in its studio theater.
Initially, Holiday (Tracey Conyer Lee) doesn’t want to go on. She’s coaxed onstage by her pianist, who also tries his best to keep her on track throughout the night.
She’s not glad to be there. Philadelphia, she tells us, “has been the rat’s ass for me.”
She sings, interspersed with rants and rambling stories about her life. The more she drinks, the more unfiltered she becomes. At one point, she leaves the stage to shoot up in her dressing room.
Holiday self-destructs before our eyes. It’s a raw and blunt performance.
Lee portrays the iconic singer with nuance, looking and eerily sounding like her. (Costume design by Kirche Leigh Zeile and wigs by Bobbie Zlotnik)
Lee performs songs such as “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Easy Livin’” and “T’Aint Nobody’s Biz-ness.” She also sings the two songs she’s probably best known for: “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child,” which she wrote for her mother.
Lee as Holliday is a combination of street and sophistication, with monologues poetic and profane.
She talks about two musical influences, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, saying, “Pops had the most beautiful feelin’ and I wanted that feelin’. And I also wanted Bessie’s big sound, but my voice wasn’t big like that. So between the two of them I sort of got Billie Holiday.” And she sings Smith’s “Gimme a Pig Foot,” but does it her own style.
She also shares stories about what it was like to tour in the Jim Crow South with Artie Shaw and his band, and how difficult it was being the only Black member of the tour – all the indignities and hatred she suffered, despite the men trying to protect her.
Barcourt, who accompanies her, makes his stand-up piano sound like a grand, with Erb plucking the strings of his stand-up bass as if they’re heart strings, occasionally bowing the instrument to produce low, mournful sounds. The two also have an opportunity to perform by themselves.
The play is listed in the program as being 90 minutes long but runs at least nine or 10 minutes over that, with no intermission. I wish director Marshall Jones III had tightened up the pacing a little; on opening night some audience members occasionally seemed restless, with some leaving the studio and then returning to their seats.
But overall, this is a gripping performance.
Life was difficult for Holiday, and Lee presents the singer with her moods and complexities. The pain, the struggle, the yearning, and yes, also the beauty, are all poured into her music, presenting a performance as bittersweet as her life.
Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill plays at the Struthers Studio at Gulfshore Playhouse, 100 Goodlette-Frank Road, Naples, through April 27. Running time is 1 hour, 39 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $129, $84 and $39. For more information call 239-261-7529 or go to www.gulfshoreplayhouse.org.
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