Review: LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL at The Black Theatre Troupe

Guest contributor David Appleford raises as a glass of cheer for The Black Theatre Troupe’s production of LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL.

There’s a particular kind of theatrical alchemy that happens when an actor doesn’t just play a role but inhabits it, breathes it in, and exhales it back out as something undeniable. LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL is built on that alchemy, and at the Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center on East Washington Street in Phoenix, presented by The Black Theatre Troupe until April 13, Rico Burton doesn’t just give us Billie Holiday—she resurrects her, remolds her, and lets her burn before our eyes. It’s the kind of performance that leaves you feeling both exhilarated and shattered; while Holiday’s voice still soars, her spirit is crumbling. And Burton gives us every bit of that raw contradiction.

From the moment we step into the theater, the spell begins. Sarah Harris’s set, aided by Alex J. Alegria lighting design, transforms the space into a hazy, late-night club—small, intimate, and dripping in atmosphere. The raised stage thrusts out. Two empty nightclub tables with lighted candles flank the front becoming part of the scenery, effective props in Holiday’s final act.

A three-piece band (piano, bass, and drums) is already playing as we settle in, with an animated Calvin Worthen as Emerson behind the bar stage right, serving the drinks, setting the nightclub mood. The illusion is complete before the first note is even sung—we’re not just watching a play; we’re spending a night at Emerson’s in 1959, and Lady Day is about to walk in.

And then she does. Burton’s Billie Holiday doesn’t so much enter as she floats onto the stage, draped in elegance, already slipping into a song as if she never needed to start—it’s just there, waiting to pour out of her. The voice, the phrasing, the lazy yet precise way she leans into a note, stretching it out until it nearly breaks—it’s all Holiday, but without a trace of impersonation. Burton channels rather than mimics, and it’s the difference between mere tribute and true transformation.

While her professional name was Billie Holiday, a combination of silent movie actress Billie Dove and her father, Clarence Holiday (even though his last name is often listed as Halliday), it was music partner Lester Young who nicknamed her Lady Day. It would be later in the early forties, due to a stint of recording under a different label while contracted to another, that she would use the nickname professionally. LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL is a musical play of what happened the night Billie Holiday returned to Philadelphia in 1959 to sing in a small night club. It was just four months before her death.

For the first few songs, the illusion is intoxicating. This Billie is radiant, in her element, teasing the audience with knowing glances, relishing the moment. But then, slowly, the fractures start to show. She drinks—at first, just a casual sip, then more insistently. She reminisces, at first with nostalgia, then with the kind of pain that sneaks up on her mid-sentence.

As we learn, all she ever wanted was a home, a place to cook, some children and a small night-club where she could sing to her friends. It would all be denied, but at least for a short while, that night in 1959, she had a stage at Emerson’s and an adoring, intimate crowd she could call her friends, and she could sing. But as the evening progressed came the baggage.

The monologues in Lanie Robertson’s script are drawn from Holiday’s own words, and they paint a picture that is both harrowing and strangely matter-of-fact. Raped at ten. Running from reform schools. The sting of racism. The arrest. The addiction. The relentless, bone-deep exhaustion of a life lived on the edge of survival.  Burton delivers these stories not with self-pity but with a kind of weary amusement—until, suddenly, the amusement cracks, and the anger floods in.

Director Chanel Bragg doesn’t let the audience off easy. This isn’t a glossy, romanticized version of Billie Holiday; this is the Billie of 1959, at the very end, exhausted and unraveling. Watching her unravel is devastating. Burton, too, doesn’t shy away from the ugliness—the drunken slurs in her speech, the moments where her body betrays her, the sudden bursts of rage that leave the room heavy with silence. It’s a brutal thing, to watch a legend dissolve before your eyes, and the play doesn’t soften the blow.

While the singing and the backing three-piece band lead by music director and pianist Cory D. Dugar, with outstanding support from bassist Wallace Steele and drummer Nicholas J. Arrington, are undeniably sublime, Lanie Robertson’s play is not without its flaws. The jazz performer’s tales of her unbelievably tragic existence are certainly fascinating – most of us can’t even begin to imagine what her experiences were like - but hearing them, one after another as her personal condition deteriorates through drinking on stage, takes its toll and sometimes grinds a moment to an uncomfortable halt.  There’s no enjoyment to be had witnessing a talent disintegrate before you.

But then, there’s the music. That’s where Holiday, even in her lowest moments, reclaims herself. God Bless the Child, Strange Fruit, What a Little Moonlight Can Do—each song is both an escape and an exorcism. Burton’s performance, backed by the band, doesn’t just mimic Holiday’s sound; it captures the way she bled into every note, as if singing was the only way she could keep from vanishing entirely.

There are moments in LADY DAY that feel almost too painful to watch. When Billie stumbles through her last song, barely able to hold herself upright, it’s heartbreaking. And when she finally walks offstage, leaving only the memory of her voice hanging in the air, it’s a quiet kind of devastation—the kind that lingers.

This isn’t an easy show. It’s not altogether a feel-good night at the theater. But it’s a necessary one. And Rico Burton - magnificent, fearless, utterly electric—delivers the kind of performance that makes you forget you’re watching a performance at all. See it, not just for the music, not just for the history, but to witness a piece of theater that doesn’t just tell a story—it makes you feel every note of it.

The production runs through April 13th at:

Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center ~ 1333 E. Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ

The Black Theatre Troupe ~ https://www.blacktheatretroupe.org/ ~ boxoffice@blacktheatretroupe.org ~ 602-258-8128

Photo credit to Laura Durant: Rico Burton

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