By the time HBO commissioned a filmed presentation of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Audra McDonald had already won a Tony for her performance as Billie Holliday. For audiences that didn’t catch the show live, the expectations were thus set: a 90-minute tour-de-force, in which McDonald would detail Holliday's tragic life story while interspersing piercingly accurate renditions of her best-known records. In many ways, it’s a work of performance art, a one-person show as showy and challenging as they come – Lady Day’s value as an HBO production, on its face, would consequently seem to be the deliverance of such an acting showcase to a broader audience than Broadway typically attracts.
Yet, as HBO’s Lady Day proves, the advantages of relocation and repurposing extend far beyond the attraction of more eyeballs. Filmed unobtrusively in an intimate New Orleans café – the play, originally written in 1986, is set in mid-50s Philadelphia, near the end of Holliday’s life – the production adds dimension to McDonald’s character creation and to the play itself, which finds Holliday rambling through her life story as she drinks herself out of lucidity. Screen and theatrical acting are two substantively different modes of performance – and given that Lady Day is entirely consisting of and about performance, the shift to a televised format, even in the livest form possible, inevitably alters its effect.
But only for the better. As directed by Lonny Price, the recent Broadway production’s helmer, HBO’s Lady Day is a thrilling expansion of a performance already hailed as one for the record books. Price’s method of filming is fairly minimalist, capturing McDonald from just a handful of angles and without any flourishes or cinematic bravado. He presents as he observes – and that provides the best kind of opportunity for his viewers. McDonald’s work is appropriately dialed-down from the Great White Way, looser and more playful as she shifts from three-tiered theater to quiet café. What she achieves here is not better or worse than her stage interpretation; it’s not different in the sense that it lacks thoroughness, as if her revision here is too radical. McDonald’s alteration for HBO is merely an enhancement, a deepening of the soul and the passion with which she initially (and seismically) brought Holliday to life.
Plus, the range that the camera provides allows for a greater appreciation of what McDonald accomplishes in the role. Watching long and close, from behind and out front, we track her from several angles and perspectives – you can feel the pain that she carries as she slips into a harrowing monologue, or the strange mix of blissful sadness that seeps in as she sings Holliday’s lyrics rooted in pain, but voiced with remarkable power. Price doesn’t overuse the closeup, but whenever he zooms in, McDonald’s astonishing commitment comes into focus: tears streaming down her face, sweat pouring from her forehead, snot dripping out of her nose. It’s a breathtaking feat put on display – an embodiment of such emotional, physical and mental accuracy that the live audience appears profoundly affected, the more McDonald reveals Holliday’s history of sexual, alcohol and drug abuses.
The writing sings more melodically, too. On the Broadway stage, Lady Day can feel relatively contrived and stiff as its eponymous star so habitually slips into her life story, despite the lack of intimacy and interaction permitted. (After all, the real Holliday would prefer to sing in tight spotlights so as not to see her audiences.) But the reorientation in set design allows for a more organic expression of the material – as McDonald tumbles down the steps and circulates the room, chatting with pained aimlessness, the writing’s narrative direction emotionally coheres. Again, McDonald sells it with frightening authenticity. Her eyes flicker, her pitch inflects and her one-sided grin materializes, providing emotional context for the abrupt subject changes and lengthy recountings in significant need of it.
But then, what shakes you in the end – what stays with you long past the play’s conclusion – are the songs. McDonald’s empowered performance of “God Bless the Child,” complete with Holliday’s hoary timbre, is pretty masterful, only deepened by the description of Holliday’s complex relationship with her mother that precedes the song. As Holliday drinks deeper into the night, and as the magic of her voice is overwhelmed by her inebriation, the way McDonald floats between different lyrics and different states of mind is a sight to behold. And yet the highlight, in a production of many, is the same as in the original stage version: the play’s midpoint, an uninterrupted performance of “Strange Fruit.” I won’t spoil what McDonald does with the song. But I will say that it lands spectacularly – almost unbelievably.
That goes for much of Lady Day – and, especially, for the otherworldly actress at its heartbreaking center.
Grade: A-