Now Playing: Lady Day at Emerson Bar & Grill

Last week The Lyric Stage Company of Boston opened the legendary musical story, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, featuring Billie Holiday late in her career. The performance clocks in at around 90 minutes, with no intermission and recreates one of Holiday's final performances in which she sings, struggles with memories of the past and a harrowing addiction to heroin.

Prior to the performance the renowned Spiro Veloudos introduced the production and encouraged the audience to participate and interact with the performance, as it is set in a nightclub. While the audience I attended with kept quiet, the folks around me whispered throughout the production and opened krinkly candy and tissue wrappers all evening long. Unfortunately my badly behaved neighbors did infringe upon my experience as I am not a huge Billie Holiday fan. I was intrigued by the concept of the production and am always curious about how the creative team at The Lyric will use their intimate theatre. In the case of Lady Day at Emerson Bar & Grill, I was once again impressed. The Lyric continues to amaze me with the sense of intimacy they create in the medium sized and somewhat black box style space while also establishing a comfortable distance for the audience.

This production feature Jacqui Parker as Billie Holiday and while her acting performance was solid, I found her singing to be underwhelming. Parker was fine, but she did not produce the same quality and exactness of natural talent as Billie Holiday. While this production is a performance of a real person and some differences between performance and person are acceptable, Parker's vocal performance raised questions for me because it was unclear if her flatness was a function of Billie Holiday's state at the time of performance (ravaged after years of drug addiction) or if Parker was truly not a great singer. I suppose this is a great role for an actress who can only sort of sing because the audience can blame it on the drugs.

However, setting aside the mediocre singing, the rest of the production was enjoyable (minus my neighbors!). The accompanist was lovely and provided balance to Holiday's increasingly unhinged monologue. The simple set served as a neutral backdrop to Holiday's wandering discourse, allowing her to invite the audience in to pieces of her life. The lighting design works in harmony with the play's transitions from monologue to song - as the pianist plucks out a tune, the lights shift and throughout each number, depending on its tone, the lights shift further to heightened the tension or joy. Although compact, the play starts out slow and picks up the pace in jumps and starts as Holiday's stories linger with the smoky air.

Lady Day at Emerson Bar & Grill

- KER