Geva presents Billie Holiday in an existential light 

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The theatrical premise of Lanie Robertson’s 1986 musical “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill” — which runs March 5 through 31 at Geva Theatre Center — is a simple one. The legendary American jazz singer Billie Holiday, portrayed by Laurin Talese, sings at a club toward the end of her career.

But for director Jeffrey L. Page, the stakes are much higher than that.

“The songs tell the story,” he said. “And so I’ve kind of taken the songs, and I’ve imagined these songs to live inside of this fantastical world where she is in a liminal space between earth and the great beyond, or heaven.”

Holiday is giving a concert as she’s done countless times in her career; she’s also pleading with God to let her into heaven. Her fate is up to the audience’s interpretation.

“Deep Song,” the final of the set at Emerson's, is a key example of the existential struggle at the heart of the singer’s performance and experience as she sings: Where can I be headed for?/ This blues crawled in my door to lick my love once more/ Love lives in a lonely land where there’s no helping hand to understand...Never hope to understand/ Love is a barren land.

Holiday comes to terms with the summation of her life — through the music itself and between-song stage banter — as she’s performing, dealing with her inner emotional world while also accessing emotions during an external concert performance. (To reinforce the intimate club vibes, Geva will have onstage seating at tables-for-two available to audience members.)


Page is an accomplished director and choreographer whose CV includes everything from opera and work as associate creative director on Mariah Carey’s “Sweet, Sweet Fantasy” European tour to working as a member of Beyoncé’s creative team on “The Formation World Tour.”

He sees a connection between Beyoncé and Billie Holiday, in particular, as it pertains to the ways in which they have refused to exist simply for other people’s entertainment.

“There’s a relationship there between what a singer is expected to do for their public and what they can do based on the inner turmoil that’s going on,” Page said. “It’s unwrapping a metaphor that’s much bigger than what meets the eye. The audience, of course, has to decide what that bigger metaphor is."

He said the answer involves hard work, and likened it to unburdening oneself from fears and doubts through therapy.

“In order for you to release that, you actually have to face every single moment,” said Page. “She faces every single moment of her life — the fact that she does not have any kids (and) she's not married. The fact that so many people around the world lean on her to help to heal them, and she hasn't even healed herself.”

Geva Theatre Center presents “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill” from March 5 through 31 on the Wilson Stage. The show is recommended for patrons 16 and older. Tickets for regular seating are $30-$62. Tables for two are available onstage for $100. gevatheatre.org.

Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].