Lady Day! (LAArtsOnline.com)

By KEN WERTHER
Photo Courtesy of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

“Pull up a chair and order up a drink because she’s got a life to sing.” Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill invites audiences to spend an evening filled with personal tales of difficult choices, bad breaks, worse men, and some of the most glorious songs ever written — a visit with music legend Billie Holiday as portrayed by the Tony Award-winning actress Audra McDonald. It’s an intimate evening up close with a legend — well, two legends, actually.

Nicknamed ‘Lady Day,’ Billie Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Dead at age 44 from a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse, her hits “God Bless the Child,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Taint Nobody’s Biz-ness,” among many others, assured her a place in the history books.

Audra McDonald has made a bit of history herself — her performance as Lady Day won her an unprecedented sixth Tony Award, having won previously for Carousel (at age 23), Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, and Porgy and Bess. McDonald is also a two-time Grammy Award-winner with five solo albums to her credit.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill plays through August 31 at Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway in NYC.