Don’t be too timid to sit at one of the small tables onstage at Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s “Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill.” The clinking of your drinks can only slide you deeper into the immersion that Felicia V. Loud creates as famed jazz singer Billie Holiday.
Of course, I didn’t brave the spotlight; critics prefer to lurk in the shadows. But Loud puts you there with her in any case. Far more than the mimicry of Holiday’s singularly fragile-sounding voice that Loud masters, her capture of Holiday’s hard-as-nails grit and impromptu banter grants an astonishing immediacy.
“Lady Day” requires a performer to render Holiday’s signature tunes such as “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and "Foolin' Myself” that made her famous from her early big band days of the 1930s and into the 1950s. But Holiday clearly has a lot more to say than what’s in the lyrics of her songs, and she freely fills in the tales of her life.
We get a glimpse of her tragic last days performing at the South Philadelphia dive in 1959, just a few months before she was to die at age 44 of liver cirrhosis and heart failure. And Holiday has a lot to tell: of her scrubwoman mother “The Duchess,” her inspiration from blues singer Bessie Smith, her early years singing with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and her sour prohibition from performing in New York’s clubs due to a conviction and parole for heroin possession.
Loud renders all this with a plainspoken intimacy as her Holiday slips slowly into a pickled defiance, a transition director MJ Sieber guides smoothly. Even though the tales of celebrity clashing with segregation have become familiar, Loud offers them with a blend of jaded bitterness and roadhouse glee that renews by authenticity. They are starkly outlined by her simple renderings of Holiday’’s “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.”
It’s notable that Loud, in addition to her acting credits, is an well-regarded soul singer (currently with band Black Stax). That may also be the key to her portrayal: she knows the dynamic between a singer, her musicians (Ryan Shea Smith on piano and LeNard Jones on drums) and an audience, and can make it feel genuine.
Most of all, Loud never permits this portrayal of a woman at the dingy end of her career to seem merely tragic. It’s sad to be sure, but rejects any notion of pity. This celebration of life and art fully lived is just the way Lady Day would have wanted to be remembered.
Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s “Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill” runs through Oct. 12 at Erickson Theatre Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Avenue. Tickets: $25, Seniors/Students $10; (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com
