'Lady Day' review: Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday
9 / 10
In Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a late entry in the Broadway season, McDonald has taken on the task of impersonating a real person in what's virtually a solo show about the late jazz singer Billie Holiday, whose rough life story is almost as familiar as her distinctive sound...McDonald doesn't let Holiday wallow as she tells us, almost offhandedly, about her rape at 10, her prostitution at 14, the macabre death of her great-grandmother, a slave, and the racism that haunted her career. Long before we are shocked, yet again, by the haunting images of her great song about racism, 'Strange Fruit,' this amazing actress and this jazz icon are indivisible.
