Songs of Heart and Shadow

Lady Day Impresses at ACT

Wandering down a short hallway from the lobby, the lights dim, passing photos from the 40s and 50s and a 50s-era kitchen. Entering the theatre itself, the world has been transformed. Tables and chairs fill the small theatre, a live jazz band is playing in the corner. Experienced fingers dance along the piano keys (Richie Gardenhire) blending with the sorrowful tones of the trumpet (George Pierce), while the rest of the quartet plays on. With everyone settled in and welcomed to the show, Billie Holiday (Vivian Melde), dressed in white and holding flowers, floats into the theatre turned jazz club and lets her longing lyrics soar.

In a deep and beautifully depicted take on the life of music legend Billie Holiday, Anchorage Community Theatre has pushed its usually family-friendly lineup with Lady Day at Emmerson’s Bar & Grill. Directed by Matt Fernandez, Lady Day is set in 1959, four months before Billie Holiday’s death. Unlike Lanie Robertson’s original script, however, Fernandez radically transformed the effectively one-woman show into something that pushes the examination and artistic expression of Holliday–having four actresses play a single role.

“I am proud to see my vision of having four different Billy Holidays, in four different aspects of her character, her history and her DNA presented upon the stage,” Fernandez says. Rightfully so. This delicious take on the original play adds further depth to an already touching, if explicative-filled, show. Beginning with Melde as the 1959 Holiday, over the course of the show we meet Holiday at the height of her career (ShaeLisa M. Anderson), Holiday in her early days (Kinley Norman) and Holiday during the darkest periods of her life (Rachel Cheathon). This dance between actresses allowed for possibilities of compassion and reflection that the original show did not allow for.

One such moment was when the elegant Anderson, decked in silky white with sparkling shoulder straps, tells the story of how her father died in the first world war. Though she tries to smile through it all, at the end of the story of gas in the trenches burning out her father’s singing voice and access to healthcare as a black man in the south leading to his early death, she becomes lost in her own sorrow. But as the powerfully elegant Melde had shared earlier, that if you don’t perform exactly to contact, you don’t eat. Silently, Melde walks up behind Anderson, sliding Holiday’s iconic flowers into her hair. Even though she is still sad, Anderson comes to life just enough to perform, reminding us all that even in points of pain the show must go on.

The performance is brought to life, not just by these four amazing actresses, but by the quartet that plays live throughout the show. Having decided on the show, his first on the main ACT stage since 2004, Fernandez was concerned that he might not find skilled musicians to take up the challenge. However, with the help of Karen Strid at UAA, he was able to find a crew that held everything together and allowed seamless transitions throughout the show. “She knows everyone in local music it seems,” he jokes.

Holiday’s life was far from sunshine and roses, even if songs like God Bless the Child still live beautifully on in cultural memory. Cheathon’s slow appearance to the stage from the back of the room creeps into the heart with the darkness the tale tells as an undercurrent. Sharing the challenges of black experience in the 1930s-50s United States, her sunken-in cheeks and ragged clothing remind us of Holiday’s descent into drugs thanks to her first husband and her time in prison. Anderson says afterwards, trying to bring us back to the light with jokes of the time, that her mother once said that “Sonny Monroe was the only colored man who was darker on the inside than the outside.” Because the actresses and character alike were African American, it allowed an opportunity to hear powerful language and stories that no other production could ever allow.

The power of Holiday is an important one for everyone to learn. As the soft but touching performance of Norman reminds us all, “you wouldn’t be who you are now if you hadn’t been who you were then.” Definitely an 18 and over performance, Lady Day is well worth attending for the humor, the music, the depth and especially the haunting four-woman harmony of Strange Fruit.

Transfixed, the audience barely breathed. Anchorage so rarely gets shows that will challenge and make you think on such a level, and ACT has outdone itself.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill runs through February 19th at Anchorage Community Theatre. Tickets are available at actalaska.org