Audra McDonald Photo: CFP
Singer Audra McDonald, a five-time Tony winner, channels legendary American jazz singer Billie Holiday in the Broadway musical
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill in a performance critics described as a "spellbinding tour de force" and "intoxicating."
McDonald, 43, is a classically trained soprano who won her last best actress Tony for
The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess in 2012. But in
Lady Day she becomes Holiday, who is considered one of the greatest jazz singers ever.
The musical, which debuted off-Broadway nearly 30 years ago, opened on Sunday at the Circle in the Square theater for a limited 10-week-run.
The entertainment industry publication Variety said the musical "was waiting for a great singer like Audra McDonald to reach out and bring this tragic figure back from the grave," while the Los Angeles Times said it is a "showcase for McDonald's rare artistry."
The show, written by Lanie Robertson (
Back County Crimes and
Nasty Little Secrets) is set in a small, seedy bar in Philadelphia, where Holiday, in poor health, performed before a handful of people just a month before she passed away in 1959 at the age of 44.
Holiday, who was nicknamed "
Lady Day" by saxophonist Lester Young, had what the musical's director Lonny Price described as a Dickensian kind of upbringing.
Despite her impoverished childhood, abusive relationship and addiction, Holiday's extraordinary talent and distinctive style assured her stardom, even in the racially divided America of the 1930-40s.