✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Theatre

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill Review ★★★★★

17 Jun 17 – 09 Sep 17, Check website for additional timing

An extraordinary performance by Broadway great Audra McDonald makes Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill at the Wyndham’s Theatre an unmissable show

By Lucy Brooks on 3/2/2017

3 CW readers are interested
Audra McDonald and Shelton Becton in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill: photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
Audra McDonald and Shelton Becton in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill: photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill Review 5 Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill Review Lucy Brooks
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill review: Culture Whisper says ★★★★★


It’s a five star performance the likes of which you’re unlikely to see again any time soon. Audra McDonald gives us Billie Holiday in the final stages of her turbulent life, by turns mischievous and funny, combative and maudlin, angry and lewd – and, throughout, increasingly vulnerable and very, very drunk.


The scene is the small, seedy Emerson's Bar and Grill in south Philadelphia on a March night, 1959. The front rows of the Wyndham’s stalls have been removed. In their stead bar tables and chairs create just the right atmosphere. If you can withstand the intensity of this performance and want to feel as though you’re part of it, then aim for tickets at those tables.


Billie Holiday, who got the nickname Lady Day from saxophonist Lester Young, is singing here with her three-men jazz band. This is the twilight of her life; four months hence, at only 44-years-old, she’ll be dead of cirrhosis and heart failure – conditions aggravated by a lifetime of drink and hard drug use.


Lanie Robertson’s play, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, is an homage to the woman she describes as 'the world's greatest jazz singer.' The structure is that of Lady Day’s show: a succession of famous, epoch-making musical numbers (God Bless the Child, T'aint Nobody's Business If I Do and many others) interspersed with the ever more rambling reminiscences of the singer as she addresses her audience and her long-suffering band leader, pianist Jimmy Powers.


It’s a brittle structure that in the hands of a less skilled performer might not entirely work. But from her first entrance, resplendent in a white glittering evening gown, Audra McDonald completely owns the stage, the character and the audience.


It’s an enthralling tour de force.


She takes us on a whirlwind tour of Billie Holiday’s life on edge: the poverty, the some-time prostitute mother who couldn’t care for her, but whom she adored, the musician father who abandoned the family early on, the lovers who used her and abused her. And always, persistently, in 20th century segregated America, the racism endured by people of colour, the daily humiliations and prohibitions, the insults, the legal injustices.


She tells us also about Billie Holiday’s love for music, her unique talent, the inspiration she drew from another jazz/blues great, Bessie Smith. She rejects the label of blues singer, though, 'I'm a jazz singer,' Lady Day states. Or rather she does 'the blues feeling but with jazz beats.'


And when Audra McDonald breaks into song, the similarity to Billie Holiday, not only in the tone and modulation of her stunning voice, but in the feeling she injects into the numbers bring out the goosebumps. The climax of the show, the one number that everything builds up to, is the song Strange Fruit, a searing indictment of the racist lynchings in the American deep south.


You know it’s coming; but when it does, it – and McDonald – send shivers down your spine.


Watching multiple award-winner Audra McDonald – six Tonys, two Grammys and the 2015 National Medal of the Arts, the US highest honour in the Arts field – feels like a privilege, and one which the audience acknowledged with a spontaneous, roaring standing ovation.


She is well-served by her musicians – Shelton Becton (piano), Frankie Tontoh (drums) and Neville Malcolm (bass) – and by a staggeringly numerous cast of creatives and producers.


Not forgetting, in a moment of whimsy, a very laid-back Chihuahua, acting the short but audience-pleasing part of Billie Holiday’s much-loved dog, Pepi.


Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill opened on Broadway in March 2014 to record ticket-sales and a flurry of awards and has finally hit the West End. It will probably rate as THE show of the summer in London.


Click here to book now

by Teresa Guerreiro

What Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill Review
Where Wyndham's Theatre, 32 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DA | MAP
Nearest tube Leicester Square (underground)
When 17 Jun 17 – 09 Sep 17, Check website for additional timing
Price £19.50 - £62.50
Website Click here to book now



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
Gemma Arterton in Funny Woman, Sky Max (Photo: Sky)
What to watch on TV this week
London exhibitions on now — Peter Doig, Courtauld Gallery
Top 15 exhibitions on now in London

Editor's Picks

Ibinabo Jack, Liisi LaFontaine and Amber Riley in Dreamgirls, Savoy Theatre. © Brinkhoff & Mogenburg
Best Musicals: London 2016
Theatre ticket discounts London. Photo: Lloyd Dirks
Theatre tickets London: discounts and offers
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2023
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • The Alchemist, Covent Garden

    Renowned for its molecular mixology, placing theatre and immersive experiences at its core, The Alchemist opens its second London branch in Covent Garden

    Read more...
    Map
  • Xu

    Xu has it all. It looks good enough to eat, the menu is thrilling and they're to be applauded for bringing proper Taiwanese dining to London. The service is beautifully judged and well informed. The only challenge may be getting a reservation, as almost all the critics love it.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • Maison Bab
    Book Map
3

Musical

Broadway

Jazz

West End

You might like

  • Juno Calypso The Honeymoon Suite Archival Pigment Print 102 x 66 cm Courtesy of the artist and TJ Boulting Gallery

    From Selfie to Self-Expression, Saatchi ★★★★★

  • Chatsworth House: RHS Flower Show Chatsworth Estate

    Chatsworth Flower Show

  • Pablo Picasso, The Dream, 1932

    Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy ★★★★★, Tate Modern



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×