Theatre Review | "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill" 

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How do you cast the role of a legendary performer — someone like Billie Holiday, one of the greatest jazz singers of the 20th century, and the subject of the musical play “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”? If you’re on Broadway, you cast an icon in her own right like Audra McDonald, who won a Tony Award for her uncannily close portrayal of Holiday in the 2014 revival.

Or, you can opt for someone who may not capture the distinctive timbre of Billie Holiday but instead embodies the stage presence and vocal mastery of a star performer – someone like Laurin Talese, who leads Geva Theatre’s co-production (with Philadelphia Theatre Company) of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” playing through March 31.

Set in some version of 1959, “Lady Day” is a theatrical concert that imagines Holiday’s last show at Emerson’s Bar and Grill in Philadelphia before her death at 44. Or perhaps, as her mental state becomes more agitated and a hint of the supernatural creeps in, it’s really imagining her last moments alive.

Under Jeffrey T. Page’s direction, the production is committed to creating an immersive atmosphere of the jazz club, which begins when the audience steps into the smoky theater and takes in the larger-than-life set design by Thom Weaver. A stool and microphone sit centerstage in front of a red curtain framed by lights. Surrounding this built-in stage are black walls covered with projections of a constellation of jazz posters, featuring the likes of Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and Miles Davis. To the left is the piano; to the right a bar. Between the audience and the stage is a semicircle of red tables, where audience members who paid $100 each for tickets become part of the spectacle.

The first word from Billie, heard from offstage, is “no.” Talese, as Billie, enters in a lovely shoulder-less white dress and full-sleeve gloves (costume designed by Tiffany Bacon) and strides to the bar to pour herself a drink. Despite clear distress, she turns on the charm and assures the audience, “It’s just like I was home and all you was my friends.”

The script by Lanie Robertson consists of meandering anecdotes directed to the audience, where Billie opens up about her life: her mom’s nickname, her father’s death, her first love, her musical influences, being a Black woman in Jim Crow America, being arrested for her struggles with drug addiction. Her talking is punctuated with laughter (more disconcerting than infectious), as Billie uses dark humor to cope with a lifetime of abuse and racism. Overall there isn’t much of a narrative arc, and while Talese’s mannerisms liven up her monologues, the real heart of the show is the music.

As soon as Talese opens her vibrantly red-lipstick-painted mouth to sing, her talent is obvious. Her tone is smooth and rich, with impressive control as she shifts between registers and delivers riffs. The script describes her style as “the blues feeling with the jazz beat,” though Talese blends in some soul and Broadway belting. The set covers several of her standards, including “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone,” “Somebody’s On My Mind,” “When A Woman Loves a Man,” and her two most popular songs, which get teased early in the night: “God Bless The Child” and “Strange Fruit.” She occasionally interacts with her accompanist, the show’s music director Will Brock, who was clearly cast for his musicality and piano skills rather than his acting.

Talese’s voice would be more than enough to carry the show, but this production notably layers in projections (designed by Taj Rauch) displayed on the walls above and around her. The frequent changing of images, from jazz festival posters to clips of swing dancing, artificially mimics the constant movement one might experience at a bar. When Billie references influences like singer Bessie Smith or saxophonist Leslie Young, their images appear; the fictional bartender also gets projected. The success of this will vary — some audience members may appreciate the visual stimuli, while others may find it distracting.

The projections become more heavy-handed as Holiday’s mental state becomes more agitated. The anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit” gets layered with more than a half dozen depictions of dehumanizing caricatures of Black people from American entertainment, all played simultaneously – an on-the-nose gratuitousness at odds with the understated horror of the song’s lyrics.

The excess and bombast of these projections seem to come from a desire to take Billie’s internal love and pain and make it visible onstage. This is done more effectively by the stunning lighting (also designed by Weaver), which bathes Holiday in rich blues and purples during her songs, and concludes with an otherworldly glow in the final scene.

“Music is light to me,” Billie says, and if there were any doubts why her life needed some light, this production makes it clear as day.

"Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill" plays through March 31 at Geva Theatre Center. More info and tickets here.

Katherine Varga is a freelance contributor to CITY. Feedback about this article may be directed to [email protected].