What a Little Moonlight Can Do: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

Portland Stage opened its season with a revival (new production) of Lanie Robertson’s Greek tragedy Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Greek tragedy, you ask? Yup. The only true difference between, say, Medea and Billy Holiday being the horrors and atrocities endured by Lady Day are all chillingly true.

The scene: Emerson’s Bar and Grill in Philadelphia, March 1959 – only months before the music industry lost one of its supremely uniquely gifted voices, and most tortured souls breathed her last, at the far too young age of 44.

Many critics made hash of Robertson’s play calling it (apart from its songs) clichéd and predictable. To them I say, as would his Lady Day, “Well, fuck that shit.” I’ve now seen several productions and each has had the power to destroy its audience, cajoling us, chiding us, inviting us and chilling us to our collective core. Each production has had its own spin while remaining true to Billie’s tale of woe.

Portland is lucky to have a veteran of the play, Tracey Conyer Lee, now in her fourth production as Billie, who, from the outset, demonstrates she has the singer, to be indelicate here, under her skin. The voice is bigger, plusher than Holiday’s, but skillfully deployed making judicious use of that famous husky tang, and way with words. It’s as though we’re meeting a stranger, before suddenly realize it’s someone familiar. It packs a jolt. Every time.

Robertson’s script presents Holiday’s life in an extended monologue weaving its way through 15 songs that run the emotional gamut from playful to tortured. Those unfamiliar with the Lady’s life can’t help but wince as she systematically, with a combination of melodrama and detachment, recalls the death of her mother, being raped at the age of 10 and sold into prostitution and beginning the downward spiral of heroin and booze that would ravage her body and soul.

With the dexterity of a dancer, Lee’s Billie navigates the multileveled stage in a pair of death-defying high heels, bowing and bending, nearly crashing into walls with the elasticity of a genuine drunk trying to maintain her dignity. She is ever blithely unaware of just how uncomfortable she’s making everyone around her. An ever present bottle of whiskey on the bar, through tumbler after tumbler she comfortably numbs herself, loosening both lips and limbs. One can't help but feel enormously for this woman, never pity, but compassion and great concern. One of the evening’s strongest moments is the sequence leading up to the tragic song, “Strange Fruit.” Billie rails and wails about the disgusting treatment of blacks in that era as we, comfortably seated in a climate controlled auditorium, realize though we're in a much improved America since then, how very far away we remain from equality and justice. It's bracing.

There are, to be sure, great moments of levity and Ms. Lee has the audience in the palm of her hands and when she calls us “my friends,” it feels like an honor to be in such company.

Gary Mitchell stars as pianist Jimmy Powers who does his level best to keep his Lady on track – a feat which proves impossible. Ross Gallagher contributes nicely on the bass.

Earlier in the evening Billie mentions how, for the year and a day she was imprisoned, she never sang a note asking, “you ever heard a dead person singin’?” This comes into play in the haunting, wistful final scene – here a coup de théâtre as, above us, stars begin to twinkle overhead and a lush moon makes its presence known. Ah, what a little moonlight can do.

Portland Stage: The Mystery of Irma Vep

This afternoon I attended the final performance of Portland Stage's production of Charles Ludlam's "The Mystery of Irma Vep." It is no stretch to say I haven't seen an audience enjoy a show this much in years. The laughs, cheers, guffaws and groans emitted from the house served as an almost constant rhythmic counterpoint to the deliriously delicious delivery of the two actors required to play all of the characters in this mystery/horror/camp comedy.

Tom Ford (no stranger to either Portland Stage or playing multiple characters simultaneously) and Steven Strafford (making hopefully his first of many appearances with the company) delivered Ludlam's potent cocktail of high and low comedy (replete with horror spoof zingers, wicked double entendres, nods to Shakespeare, Joyce, Ibsen, etc.) making everything feel as fresh and new as when it premiered some 25 years ago: a modern classic.

Ford moved breathlessly between the randy peg-legged groundskeeper Nicodemus and the new mistress of the manor, Lady Enid, energy never flagging and a surefooted (even when with only one foot) sense of comic timing that left the audience equally breathless.

Wonderfully angular in form and face, Strafford struck a brilliantly delicate balance as he waltzed between the deadpanned Jane (the housemaid in this chamber of horrors) and the manic Lord of the Manor, famed Egyptologist Edgar Hillcrest. He was, in a word, remarkable.

Quicksilver costume (and wig) changes and nonstop dialogue at times made it seem like 3 or 4 characters were onstage at once - but nay, it was just this talented pair performing theatre magic.

Director, Christopher Grabowski paced the show beautifully, with nods to pop music culture at various points (e.g., Jane's breaking into Melissa Manchester's gooey,"Don't Cry Out Loud," and Lady Enid's energetic "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story), allowing his actors breathing room (rarely) in a show that barely stops for its intermission. Oh, yeah, the soft shoe number lip-synching Bob Hope & Bing Crosby;s "Road to Morocco" caused near hysteria throughout the house!

Greg Carville's ingenious sound design had a Bernard Herman-esque film score quality (indeed, the theme from Pyscho makes a vivid and appropriate appearance) as well as endless rumblings of the storms that seem to eungulf the haunted estate of Mandacrest.

Lighting by Christopher Studley was as quick to change as our actors, fog rising here, the brilliance of a full moon filtering through the French doors of the drawing room, and a hilarious dimming and brightening to signify Lady Enid's seeming passage into madness. The tin can footlights added an inspired touch - and well used by the cast.

Anita Stewart created the locales - the Victorian mansion with its balconies, bleeding portraits, hidden torture chambers behind sliding bookshelves, a garden leading to the mysterious Hampstead Heath, and a wildly hilarious send up of the Egyptian horizon with two foot tall pyramids and Sphinxs that moved across the stage as Lord Edgar and his guide cross the desert in search of a tomb untouched by human hands since its sealing. At one point the stage curtain lowered almost to floor level as our bumbling pair navigate on their bellies through a "dangerous" crawl space to gain entrance to a resplendent tomb chamber with elaborate sarcophagus. Beautiful!

Loyce Arthur's costumes captured everything fun about this era, particularly Lady Enid's over elaborate multi-petticoated, bustled number . . . not to mention a wig I'm sure Maria Callas wore once in Andrea Chenier!

Ludlam may have subtitled his play "A Penny Dreadful" - but I can think of no better way to chase away the mid-winter blues