STAGE REVIEW : ‘Lady Day’s’ Tortured Artist

The name “Billie Holiday” sounds so carefree.

It was a colossal misnomer, judging from Loretta Devine’s anguished portrait of the singer in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” at the Old Globe Theatre. This is a tortured artist at the end of her rope.

Lanie Robertson’s script is set rather rigidly in March, 1959, four months before Holiday died from heart failure, with liver and kidney complications. Given the time frame, it’s apt that Holiday is presented in such a sad state. And because her greatest art was transmuted from her most agonizing pain, we hear some powerfully simulated samples of that art.

As a dramatic piece, however, “Lady Day” lacks forward thrust. This is not a depiction of Holiday’s rise and fall--it’s just a glimpse of her after she has fallen. The most urgent question of the evening is whether she’ll collapse in front of our eyes.

This Holiday does tell some funny stories from her more vigorous past. But we can’t fully savor these stories--or the essence of Holiday’s musicianship--because our attention is diverted by the necessity to diagnose her condition.

Also, as in any show or docudrama that purports to be an accurate representation of a real historical figure, our attention is occasionally diverted by the question of how accurate it all is. Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, who knew Holiday well, wrote (in a generally favorable review of a Los Angeles production of “Lady Day” in 1987) that a few of this show’s anecdotes “are pure fiction.”

I found myself questioning whether some of the colloquial phrases, such as “No way, Jose” and “my main man,” were really current in 1959, and wondering why this Holiday recalled her father as a potential singer, instead of the potential trumpeter she wrote about in her autobiography, “Lady Sings the Blues.”

The format of the piece--Holiday is performing in a South Philadelphia club but starts telling us about her life between songs--raises a larger question of accuracy. In the program, one of Holiday’s lifelong friends is quoted as saying, “She had a shyness so vast that she spoke in practically a whisper.” Are we to believe that someone who fit that description would start blabbing her most intimate personal details (she was raped at 10, she says, almost as an aside) in front of a crowd of strangers?

How much more intense it must have been, when the real Holiday packed all of her sorrow into her songs, instead of dissipating her emotions in on-stage talk.

Not that Devine’s performance lacks in intensity. Though she doesn’t begin to suggest Holiday’s shyness, most of the other strands of Holiday’s personality are up there, and a couple of the songs are electrifying. When David F. Segal’s lights go down, focusing on Devine’s face at the end of “God Bless the Child,” the atmosphere crackles. And even though Will Roberson’s arena staging blocked my view of her face during the opening bars of “Don’t Explain,” Devine’s voice was potent enough that no visual explanation was necessary.

This was one of the moments when Devine sounded a lot like the recordings of Holiday. There were other moments when traces of a Broadway/gospel belting sound crept into the performance. But throughout, Devine took care to make it sound as if Holiday hadn’t taken the best care of her voice. It’s a courageous and difficult task--to remind us not only of how great Holiday was, but also of how her voice was sometimes less than great.

Even before Devine enters the bar that Robert Brill has re-created inside the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage, we can tell we’re not about to hear “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” The theater is enveloped in a smoky haze (actually dry ice), and Holiday’s pianist (Rahn Coleman) and sax player (Charles McPherson) are playing soulful, smoky jazz. (Can this show possibly work as well at a matinee as it does in the evening?)

We hear Lady Day, offstage, balking at coming out to perform. When she does emerge and begin singing, nearly every song is accompanied by another drink. Devine wears a dress (costumer: Lewis Brown) that’s none too flattering--as if Holiday, who remarks that she once weighed 200 pounds, still has problems picking out the right clothes.

Roberson’s staging keeps Devine on the move, prowling through the arena, followed by Segal’s lights. It helps disguise the fact that there isn’t much movement within the script. A few theatergoers are seated on stage at cabaret-style tables--and are served soft drinks; those seats are half price.

At Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, Balboa Park, San Diego, Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through June 10. $22.50-$30; (619) 239-2255.