It's 'round midnight in a little ol' bar in Southern Philly in March 1959, and we, the audience, the drinkers in the joint, are witnessing the disintegration of a legend.
Eleanora Fagan, aka Miss Billie Holiday, aka Lady Day, still has her customary bunch of gardenias and the voice of a husky angel, but the long white satin gloves she's wearing are less an accessory than a necessity, to cover the track marks from the heroin she's been taking. Drugs, together with love gone bad, will kill her in less than four months' time, at the age of 44. Tonight, however, she's in the mood for a little reminiscin'.
Screen/music legends generally are, in this type of intimate, end-of-career show: witness the recent Louise Brooks homage Smoking with Lulu. Writer Lanie Robertson has obviously memorised the rules of this very particular genre, and thus we have the greatest hits (God Bless the Child, Strange Fruit), the how-it-all-began (listening to Bessie Smith records on a Victrola in a Baltimore brothel) and the how-it-all-went-wrong (racial prejudice, as well as a boyfriend demanding consumption of Class A narcotics as a proof of love). But the nagging issue of veracity remains; would she really be likely to share all this during a set in front of an audience who have simply paid to hear her sing?
The graceful Dawn Hope does beautifully as Billie, filling the tiny theatre with her powerful voice and carrying us through the script's stickier moments. The oddly funereal pace of Mark Clements' production is largely due to the exigencies of the set-up, the pauses to capture fleeting memories and the half-laughs at old happiness.
Hope is far better served by the odd spirited moment, such as when she recalls relieving herself on the shoes of the maitresse d' who was adamant that there were "no toilets for coloureds" in her restaurant.
Musical director Warren Wills doubles as Billie's unconvincing last love, Jimmy Powers, but fittingly he is eclipsed by the aura of the woman herself. "Singing's always been the best part of living to me," she remarks, and hearing the beauty of her music contrasted with the sadness of her life offstage, we're reminded why.
?Until 8 September at the New End Theatre, Hampstead. Box office 020 7794 0022.
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
