In the program director’s notes for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill by Lyric Stage, the playwright recalls her boyfriend seeing Billie Holiday perform for some seven people in 1959 at a dive bar three months before she died.
That left a haunting image for Lanie Robertson. In response, she wrote Lady Day as “an attempt to rid myself of that ghost.” The question is: Did she succeed?
Directed by Michael Childs, Lyric opened Lady Day last Friday in its studio space designed to look like the titular smoky, dark dive.
Scott Guenther’s set made an immediate impression as Emerson’s with a small centered stage and the band already in place opposite the bar and a row of cabaret tables for some of the audience.