THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503250032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
``SINGING HAS always been the best part of living for me,'' Billie Holiday tells us from the stage of the Wells Theater.
It also is the best part of ``Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill,'' the musical drama running there through April 9. For 90 minutes, her struggles are re-created in a raw, emotion-filled way that is rarely even attempted on stage, much less achieved.
If Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz-blues interpreter, was Lady Yesterday, then Chris Calloway, who plays her onstage, is Lady Today. Calloway's song stylings, ranging from ``Them There Eyes'' to ``T'Ain't Nobody's Business'' with a dozen heartbreaking stops in between, is not just re-creation. She brings a new sense of clarity and strength to the Holiday legend.
When she's singing, time seems to stop. Holiday is akin to the late Judy Garland in that she effectively demanded that the audience pull with her to get her through one more song. It was never certain that she would make it.
Here is vulnerability, but vulnerability that is neither pathetic nor pitiable. Calloway suggests a woman who has lived a life on her own terms. She can, and will, pay the price.
The setting is a small, seedy bar in south Philadelphia in 1959. It is late night and it seems appropriate to hear a song about pig's feet and a bottle of beer. It is one of the last performances of Billie Holiday, a woman who died at age 44 - perhaps because of her addictions to booze and drugs but, just as likely, because of her addiction to life. As Billie tells us, ``you can only get to where you're at from where you've been.''
Calloway convinces us that we have really witnessed this painful yet exhilarating night - the night when Billie sang for the last time.
Holiday claimed she was a ``blues singer with a jazz beat.'' The beat here is supplied by pianist Bill Evans, who effectively solos with a plaintive ``Ebb Tide,'' and bass player Stephan B. Pryor.
Calloway sings of how she wants to be somebody's baby doll and of the ``Strange Fruit'' that mars the trees of the South.
There is a special moment when she sings ``God Bless the Child,'' about how Papa may have it but God bless the child that has his own. The lyrics must have special meaning to Calloway. The daughter of legendary performer Cab Calloway, she has had a career that has largely been associated with him. Here, she proves that she is a child who has her own.
Less impressive is Lanie Robertson's somewhat self-conscious ``play,'' which amounts mainly to exposition. Calloway lays a great deal of woe upon us - raped early in her life, scrubbing the steps of the local ``pleasure house,'' addicted to drugs and arrested for possession of them, abandoned by lovers, living in a world ruled mostly by white men. Put it all together and you don't have a play so much as a whining session. Our woes are best revealed by others rather than by ourselves, yet there is something heartbreaking in that there is only Billie to speak for herself.
Any actress might be cowed by the task of making this material seem casual and spontaneous. It is, indeed, more than Calloway can handle. She is a much better song stylist than actress. Yet she has the advantage of fairly foolproof material. Who can say she overdoes it? This sort of life is not one we can judge within the boundaries of normal existence. We can, however, identify overwrought and strained playing when we see it. There is some of it here.
Director Jefferson Lingquist, debuting at VSC, should encourage his actress to relax, but could anyone do better with this dramatic material? Lonette McKee, who did it on the New York stage, didn't. Nor did Diana Ross in the regrettably inaccurate movie ``Lady Sings the Blues.'' Calloway has the added challenge of playing in a theater that is larger than would be best for this show.
Scott Kiles' set for Emerson's Bar and Grill might have been seedier, but it effectively suggests the kind of watering hole where life can be discussed.
For song stylings that etch the meaning of the blues on our psyche, don't miss Calloway's heart-touching homage to a tragic, yet valiant, legend. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Chris Calloway plays Billie Holiday in Virginia Stage Company's
production of ``Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.''
by CNB