Review: LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL at Pittsburgh CLO Is Brilliant, Hard to Watch

It's a tale as old as time: the downward spiral of a once-brilliant talent into substance abuse and early death. It's the second half of the "star is born" template, and it never goes out of style... because it sadly never stops happening in real life. The list is long, with Amy Winehouse as the recent example du jour, but the archetypal musical downfall is legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. Director Tomé Cousin's production of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill is fascinating, beautiful, but also grueling in its unflinching realism. 

It's March 1959, and Billie Holiday (Gabrielle Lee) is about a month from dying of cirrhosis at age 44. Having fallen from her legendary career highs to singing at small clubs and restaurants, Holiday is drinking and drugging heavily, relying on music director and pianist Jimmy Powers (Kenney Green-Tilford, himself the actual music director) to keep her on track. Over the course of a ninety-minute club set, frequently interrupted by Holiday's storytelling tangents, Holiday tries to convince herself, and the audience, that she's still got it. And at times, she does. But at times... it's a harrowing train wreck.

I say "train wreck," but I certainly don't mean it's a bad show, just a difficult, painful look at addiction. Gabrielle Lee, an actor with a second career as top-tier backup vocalist, has the complicated task of portraying Holiday's brilliance but also her incredible decline. Lee threads the needle perfectly, allowing glimpses of Holiday's mastery that disappear moment by moment through the show. She also shines in the storytelling segments, as an increasingly incoherent and decrepit Holiday jokes, confesses and breaks down little by little. Kenney Green-Tilford makes a perfect foil for her, matching the tragicomic tone of the evening as the straight man to her diva. Besides playing the piano with a skillful jazz touch, Green-Tilford has the sort of expressive face that can be reactive or deadpan at just the right moments. The interplay between the two of them at first feels comic, but slowly grows deeply tragic.

Despite all this doom and gloom, this isn't an audience-alienating show: Lee and Green-Tilford are giving masterful, virtuosic performances, and there are enough moments of transcendent beauty and levity to season the suffering. Jazz fans in particular will be thrilled by the sounds of Green-Tilford and his combo, who take a number of instrumental interludes throughout the show. The mix of glamour and grit in Lady Day makes the perfect start to a summer in the city.