You Can't Take It With You

Oh, the joys of a well-made, genuinely funny comedy. Oh, the joys of a solid cast of Broadway stalwarts doing what they do. Oh, the joys of a sold-out theatre rocking with laughter. Oh, the joys of Kaufman and Hart's classic, You Can't Take It With You.

With the thinnest of plots,  Messrs. Kaufman and Hart fill three acts with comic bliss. Tony Kirby loves Alice Sycamore. Alice loves Tony. Tony's family is staid. Alice's is idiosyncratic. Alice's family has Tony's over for dinner. All hell breaks loose. There is never any doubt about where the show is going, but, oh, the fun of getting there. You Can't Take It With You has begot many progeny, but none can touch it for sheer joy.

This is Our Youth

Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

In 2014, a play written in 1996 and set in 1982 is making its Broadway debut. Still with me? The play is This is Our Youth, the first major work by Kenneth Lonergan, who went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for the smart and touching film You Can Count on Me and make the Pulitzer shortlist for The Waverly Gallery. Some might consider This is Our Youth a modern classic: the acclaimed, extended original run in New York is often cited as a breakthrough not just for Lonergan but its original star, Mark Ruffalo; a long-running London production featured the likes of Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna Paquin, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Chris Klein, to name just a few. Nearly twenty years after its premiere (and thirty years after it’s meant to take place), it’s on Broadway for the first time, in a production that’s billed as a “comedy” and coming direct from a well-received run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater. I suppose the question is, does the play stand the test of time?

My answer, in short, is no. This handsome but lifeless production, staged by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro and featuring the Broadway debuts of Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, and Tavi Gevinson, shows that what was once perhaps an immediate and recognizable appraisal of the play’s title “youth” has become not much more than a creak-ridden museum piece. It doesn’t help, either, that one member of the central acting trio is severely miscast.

And I and Silence

What happens when people have no options? Specifically, what happens when a pair of women, best friends who met in prison, try to make good lives for themselves in a world that has little use for them? In Naomi Wallace's poetic, uneven, heartbreaking, awkwardly named And I and Silence, what happens is not pretty.

Trae Harris and Emily Skeggs
Photo: Matthew Murphy

Jamie is black and smart and unyielding; she was an accessory to a robbery. Dee is white and uneducated and explosive; she stabbed someone in self-defense. When they meet, they are 17 and 16. Dee wants so much to be friends with Jamie, after seeing her stand up to a guard, that she sneaks from the white section to the black and shrugs off Jamie's rejections until Jamie succumbs to her admiration and offers of friendship and candy.

They spend much of their time together practicing to be maids. Jamie has the knowledge, and she tutors Dee in dusting, shining silver, and even how to bend down. They test each other's ability to put up with mean bosses and ill treatment. They discuss how to deal with sexual harassment (leave, and always remember to take your bucket and brush).

Allow Me to (Re)Introduce Myself

Hi, everyone! I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. Or, depending on your history with this blog, re-introduce myself. I’m Cameron Kelsall, and I’m the new (old) writer for Show Showdown. Those of you who’ve followed this blog for a while may remember me; I posted regularly as a contributing blogger here from 2009-2012. Prior to that, I was also a contributing writer for New Theater Corps, Channel 13’s companion blog to their wonderful program Theater Talk, and I maintained my own theatre-related blog, Theatre Snobbery, from 2006-2009.

I had to leave Show Showdown in 2012, when I moved to North Dakota for a teaching position. (Pro-tip: Don’t move to North Dakota for any reason. Just don’t do it.) After two years in the tundra, I recently moved back to NYC, and I am so happy that my fellow contributors have allowed me to resume sharing my opinions about my favorite subjects: live theatre and the arts. On a personal note, I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to continue the work of my dear friend Patrick Lee, who put his heart and soul into making this one of the best theatre blogs on the Internet.

Parade (New Hazlett Theater, Pittsburgh, PA)

Parade (book by Alfred Uhry, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown) is a musical about the 1913 Leo Frank case, which culminates in his lynching in 1915. A lot of people find entertainments about abominations of justice that culminate in brutal murders by angry mobs of morons to be sort of oxymoronic, which explains, at least in part, the chilly reception Parade got when it opened on Broadway in 2000, and closed after 39 previews and only 84 regular performances (the collapse of its chief producer, Livent, during its run, probably didn't help boost sales, either). Sure, it's possible to have a musical that is a smash hit and also a total downer--Cabaret and West Side Story are proof--but Parade came off as just a little too clinical, a little too two-dimensional, to stir the emotions of its audiences.

While this may be a central flaw in the musical, it's also one that I find particularly understandable. Leo Frank, after all, was unfairly accused of a murder, given an outrageously sham trial, and wrongly sentenced to death, basically because he was Jewish and unpopular. When the sentence was finally commuted to life in prison instead of death by hanging, he was promptly lynched by several upstanding members of the Marietta, Georgia, community (including a former governor of Georgia, several sheriffs, a judge, the mayor, and a general assemblyman who later formed the town's first Boy Scout troop). At their most basic, the events are so dreadful, so grotesque, so completely Kafkaesque, that I can understand the hesitancy among the creative team to flesh out the characters too deeply. Encouraging your audience to bond with a character who was, in reality, so terrifyingly doomed is its own fucked-up kind of torture. I would be willing to bet that the creative team struggled mightily on this front.

A Sunday at the Circus with the Bread and Puppet Theater

Photo: Me.

Bread and Puppet Theater, a politically radical puppet theater troupe, has been around since the early 1960s. In its first years, it was based in New York City, where, presumably, it fit in nicely with the many other socially conscious, and politically active fringe theater companies that had begun to crop up in the East and West Village as part of the mighty and influential Off Off Broadway movement. While most of the Off Off companies to emerge at the time were dedicated to using theater for social, cultural, and political change, Bread and Puppet set itself apart in ways that its name implies. First, it used puppets--graceful, beautiful, hand-made ones ranging from teeny-tiny ones to ones so enormous that they relied on several troupe members to lift, let alone operate. Second, it made a practice of serving its homemade sourdough rye bread to audiences after performances.

Robert Joyce papers, 1952-1973, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

The emphasis on puppets emerged from founder Peter Schumann's interests in dance, music, and sculpture; the practice of serving bread to the audience emerged from the company's interest in creating a sense of community among its audience members, and in encouraging spectators to think of the arts as just as central to life as food is.

Bread and Puppet left New York City in the early 1970s to become theater-in-residence at Goddard College, an innovative, low-residency liberal arts college in rural Plainfield, Vermont that was, at the time, a hotbed of radical thinking and artistic innovation. Once their residency ended there, the troupe decided to stay in Vermont. In 1974, they set up shop at a farm in Glover, Vermont, where they remain.

Thank you, Robin Williams.

Dragon's Breath

It's a great concept: "the story of a Young Adult paranormal romance writer who accidentally creates a dangerous cult." The cast includes the fabulous Lorinda Lisitza and Hannah Sloat. What could go wrong?

Lorinda Lisitza

Unfortunately, a lot. Michael C. O'Day's Dragon's Breath, awkwardly directed by Mikaela Kafka, offers unconvincing characters, a meandering plot, lame satire, and endless, pointless, dull exposition. There are moments that hint at an interesting, even thought-provoking play, but they are wasted in the empty noise.

The show begins with author Justine Drake doing a reading from her new novel, Dragon's Breath. We learn quickly that she is uncomfortable giving readings and that she longs for physical copies of her book, not just e-books. We learn these facts many times. As written, Justine is a major whiner who weirdly pays no attention to her online presence, even after being told that it will determine whether her book ever sees print.

The people who attend Justine's readings represent one satirical type each and are directed to be as cartoony as humanly (cartoonly?) possible. Only two exist in two dimensions rather than one (no one makes it to three): Rocco, a self-proclaimed dragon expert who picks at every sentence in Justine's books, and Laura, who perceives Dragon's Breath and its sequels to be the genuine word of the dragon gods. It is Laura who starts the cult.

Puppet Titus Andronicus

If ever a play merited skewering, it's Shakespeare's messy, pointless bloodbath, Titus Andronicus. The delightful Puppet Shakespeare Players skewer it with great glee, fabulous puppets, silly humor, clever satire, some genuinely moving acting, and lots and lots of Silly String.

The story of Titus Andronicus, a Roman general who has captured Tamara, Queen of the Goths, and blah, blah, blah, it doesn't really matter. Here's what does: Titus's family and Tamara's family are mortal enemies, and they express their animus with the ornate nastiness of a Roman tragedy crossed with a Quentin Tarantino movie, to which Puppet Titus Andronicus adds a large and welcome helping of Looney Tunes.

Puppet Titus plays fast and loose with plot, with is okay with me. It turns the first act into a song, theoretically a great idea, except that it is unintelligible and therefore a wasted opportunity. In most other ways, however, Puppet Titus makes the most of Shakespeare's worst.

The company is excellent, with Mindy Leanse the standout as poor, beleaguered Lavina. She can make you laugh and break your heart pretty much simultaneously. The three non-puppet performers--Adam Weppler as Titus, Sarah Villegas as Tamora, and Christopher Gebauer as Titus' brother--are quite effective. The puppeteers are wonderful: A.J. Coté, Tom Foran, Ross Hamman, Alex Offenkrantz, Shane Snider, and Drew Torkelson. Ryan Rinkel's direction keeps everything bopping along. And the puppets, designed by A.J. Coté, are fantastic.

Your life would be complete if you never saw Titus Andronicus. However, it would be missing something if you never saw Puppet Titus Andronicus.

(first row, press ticket)

Varekai: Cirque du Soleil

I am a big fan of Cirque du Soleil, so it pains me to write the following: Varekai is mediocre and even kind of boring.

Octavio Alegria

To be perfectly fair, I'd like to provide some context. Varekai is at Barclays Center. My friend and I got there 15 minutes before the doors opened. We were moved to different doors and different doors again, supposedly because the original doors were not being used. And then they were used. But that's a small inconvenience that I probably wouldn't have noticed if my nerves were not on edge from listening to the Barclays announcement be played again and again and again and again and again while we waited. Loudly. The announcement talked about restrictions on what you could bring in (food, drink, bottles, cans, fireworks, and weapons, in that order), their no-reentry policy, and so on. We heard it some 20 times, without even a few seconds between each playing. And did I mention it was loud? Really, really loud? And when we were let in, we were treated like people with prison records visiting a nuclear missle site.

The show itself began slowly, with forest creatures (I guess) slithering and sort of dancing. There was a lot of slithering and sort of dancing in the show. The non-acrobatic interludes were the dullest I've ever seen at Cirque du Soleil, by far. The clowns were largely annoying. The male clown did have a nice bit trying to sing a song in a, well, erratic spotlight. The female got bonked on the head and was treated as sexually desperate. At one point, her head exploded. He was presented as a sort of noble fool; she was presented as an idiot.

Fosse (book review)

Bob Fosse was talented, driven, kind, nasty, dedicated, unfaithful, brilliant, limited, addicted, and unhappy. By all accounts, he was also charismatic, seductive, and a great lay. Since the reader doesn't get to sleep with him, he is a largely unpleasant companion for the 590 pages of Sam Wasson's exhaustive, repetitive, and annoying biography, Fosse. However, if you keep your bullshit detector turned to "high"--Wasson is fond of recreating conversations as though he was there; he thinks he knows what Fosse was thinking at any given moment; his interpretations of events are unconvincing--Fosse is worth reading. As for Fosse the man: hey, Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking worshipped him, so who am I to judge?

NYMF - Central Avenue Breakdown in Concert

I finally saw it! Well...heard/saw it.  Kind of.  Whatever.  It was a concert staging.

I first caught wind of Central Avenue Breakdown following its successful run at the 2011 New York Musial Theatre Festival (NYMF).  This show – with music/lyrics by Kevin Ray, book by Kevin Ray, Andrea Lepcio, and Dominic Taylor, and additional story by Suellen Vance – racked up four awards for excellence and the Daegu International Musical Festival Award.  It was also granted a revival run at the 2012 NYMF.  And, of course, I was out of country for that entire run.  So when I heard that the 2014 NYMF was holding a one-night only concert of the show, I was like, “[Insert expletive of choice], I gotta go.”

I wasn’t disappointed.

The Long Shrift

With its even-handed, honest, and thought-provoking examination of the gray area between sex and rape, The Long Shrift has the makings of an excellent play. However, its execution is not up to its concept, and the result is a disappointment.

When the play opens, we see Henry and Sarah bickering as they move into an ugly apartment after selling their home to pay for their son Richard's legal bills. Richard is now serving ten years in prison for rape, and Henry is horrified by his growing realization that Sarah believes it is possible that Richard is guilty. In the second scene, years have passed, and Richard is home, hardened and bitter. Then Beth, his accuser, shows up, wanting to discuss what really happened on that long-ago night that exploded both of their lives into shards of pain.

The Qualification of Douglas Evans

Derek Ahonen’s The Qualification of Douglas Evans, directed by James Kautz, is the second in the Amoralists' "two play repertory exploring man’s vicious cycles." (The other is Enter at Forest Lawn, reviewed here.) Ahonen is the extraordinary author of such amazing plays as The Bad and the Better, Happy in the Poorhouse, and The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side. His plays are distinguished by their passion, poetry, humor, and unique point of view. Usually.

Samantha Strelitz, Penny Bittone,
Derek Ahonen
Photo: Russ Rowland

The Qualification of Douglas Evans is passionate and poetic, but it is far from unique and almost totally lacks humor. The story of Douglas Evans (well-played by the author), a drunk playwright of dubious talent, The Qualification of Douglas Evans follows a familiar path to rock bottom as Evans alienates everyone in his life, including the women who inexplicably care about him. (I suspect that blondes who throw themselves at drunks exist much more frequently in the minds of men than in the reality of women, but I suppose I could be wrong. I hope not.) 

While The Qualification of Douglas Evans is largely unpleasant, unedifying, and kind of pointless, it doesn't lack redeeming features. The cast is excellent; in particular, Penny Bittone is impressively effective in his many roles, and Barbara Weetman breathes dimensionality into characters who could easily be flat and cliche in lesser hands. The writing has moments of ugly beauty, and the show is well-paced and involving until a series of ill-conceived blackouts toward the end. 

I love the Amoralists, and it gives me no pleasure to give them not one, but two, mediocre reviews. However, their "two play repertory exploring man’s vicious cycles" comes across more as a two play rep exploring edgy-male cliches and fantasies.

(press ticket; second row) 

Enter at Forest Lawn

The people in Mark Roberts' Enter at Forest Lawn, directed by Jay Stull, fall down, squat in frozen crouches, twitch like dying break dancers, sashay, and ooze disjointedly, respectively. They spew words, plot, lie, manipulate, fuck, abuse drugs, molest children, and commit acts of violence. Love is unknown here, as are friendship, loyalty, and morals.

Lemp, Roberts, Pilieci
Photo: Russ Rowland.

Welcome to a version of show biz that I suspect exists far more frequently in the minds of male playwrights striving to be edgy than in real-life Hollywood. And, while Roberts, Stull, and the excellent cast offer vivid language, smart pacing, and never-flagging energy, this show suffers from the opposite of the emperor's new clothes: the clothes are real, but there is no emperor.

Which is not to say that the show isn't worth seeing. This production, presented by the Amoralists as part of a "two-play repertory exploring man's vicious cycles," is polished, frequently entertaining, and never boring. And it is acted with the Amoralists' signature balls-to-the-wall commitment, with author Roberts effectively slimy as the producer whose multi-million-dollar deal is at risk; David Lanson, physically and emotionally tied in knots by his inability to choose morals over money; Sarah Lemp, quivering with nerves and fear; Matthew Pilieci, skin-crawlingly creepy; and Anna Stomberg channeling Annette Bening's performance in the Grifters as the up-and-coming producer who would fuck a hyena if it helped her career.

If I never saw another play about the evils of L.A., it would be fine with me, but this one ultimately made it worth my while.

(press ticket, fourth row)

NYMF - Searching for Romeo

I just got back from this evening's performance of Searching For Romeo, and I have to say...I was utterly charmed.

Searching For Romeo is a comedic backstory musical for the Bard's Romeo and Juliet...think of what Gregory Maguire/Stephen Schwartz's Wicked does for L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  It's kind of like that.  Our protagonist is high school student Roz, who has just been unceremoniously dumped by her jerky boyfriend Tony (potential West Side Story ref?).  Her girlfriends try to pep her up at the start of English class, as does the Boy-Next-Door type fellow Perry.  In the midst of a class reading of Romeo and Juliet, Roz finds herself transported to Verona.  She has assumed the role of Romeo's jilted lover Rosaline; Jerk Boyfriend Tony is Romeo, Jerk Boyfriend's new girlfriend is Juliet, and Boy-Next-Door Perry is Paris.  Roz's English teacher, her friends, and classmates fill a variety of roles including Friar Laurence, Mercutio, Tybalt, the Nurse, and Lady Avare (Paris's scheming rich mother).  Despite frantically searching for Romeo at the Capulet's party, she keeps running into and finds herself strangely attracted to Juliet's recent fiance Paris.  Needless to say, hijinks ensue all around the play's famous scenes as we follow Roz/Rosaline and Paris, hoping that they will get a happy ending as opposed to the star-crossed lovers' tale of woe.

The Pigeoning

Great news: the Pigeoning is back at HERE.

"The Pigeoning is 70 minutes of pure delight. . . . Do yourself a favor and go."

Photo: Richard Termine

Cabaret

Joan Marcus

It's one thing to enter the canon; it's another to do so while simultaneously bucking just about everything the canon dictates in the first place.

I've been thinking a lot about Cabaret since I saw the Mendes revival (of the revival) last week. I've been thinking that a big part of what makes Cabaret such a masterpiece is its central dichotomy: it is an incredibly compelling, brilliantly scored stage musical that goes against everything we have been conditioned to assume we're going to get from a stage musical. Cabaret is the most ingenious, inspired, total bummer of a musical I can think of, and certainly that I have ever seen.

Yeah, I know musicals are varied and that there's no one type and that it's hard to generalize them, and all that. But still, an awful lot of American stage musicals rely on structures and tropes and trajectories that we see over and over and over again: boy meets girl, loses girl, wins girl back. Love saves the day even in times of despair. The community prevails even when terrible things happen. In the saddest musicals I can think of--Carousel, West Side Story, Fiddler, Hedwig and the Angry Inch--people die, love is denied, families and neighborhoods are torn apart, bad things happen to beloved characters. But then, audiences are always left with hope, even if just the teeniest ray of it: Billy gives his lonely, outcast daughter a star, and the whole community sings a song of strength. Maria tells everyone off after Tony dies, and the gangs imply that things will improve, or at least that they heard what she said and will take it seriously. Tevye and his neighbors are driven from their homes, but he grudgingly wishes his intermarried daughter well, and takes his traditions with him to the new world where, we presume, he'll be safe. Hedwig releases Yitzhak from bondage and gets the audience to wave their hands in solidarity with him as he sings a big rock anthem. There's always hope. Always. Even if it's very far off in the distance.

But Cabaret? Not a goddamned glimmer. The musical is set at the dawn of Nazi Germany, for chrissakes, so all there is for the characters is certain misery, angst, and fear. And Totalitarianism. Also, for many of them, suffering, torture, and death. No hope--not even, as Sally Bowles would say, an inkling. Cabaret is a musical that dangles dread in your face from the second the lights go down and the first notes of the opening number sound. Wilkommen? Bienvenue? Welcome, my ass. The music sounds great and the Emcee is beckoning, but we all already know that he's the embodiment of a country gone insane. We're in for two-plus hours with a group of characters who are manically forcing themselves to go gleefully through the motions as the city around them teeters on the brink of hell. Sure, they all get to drink, do drugs and have increasingly unsettling sex while the decline is happening, which is some small comfort for them and for us: It's nice to self-medicate in times of crisis. Anyway, it keeps the terror and the hunger at bay. 

Donogoo

It's easy to see why The Mint might choose to revive Jules Romains' comedy Donogoo. In its sarcastic skewering of business and ambition, it is as pertinent now as it was in the 1920s. However, in its careless sexism and racism, it is badly outdated. I imagine there might be a way to direct Donogoo that enhances its strengths and mitigates its weaknesses--or at least puts them in context. However, director Gus Kaikkonen (who also translated the play from its original French) did not find it. In fact, his direction is cheap, gimmicky, and inconsistent, and the production is mediocre at best.

The show begins with our protagonist Lamendin (the woefully miscast James Riordan) on a bridge considering suicide. A friend sees him, convinces him to stay alive, and sends him to a physician who will cure him--as long as Lamendin does exactly what the physician says. Lamendin does and ends up on a trek that leads him deep into the jungles of South Africa, following a silly scam that has developed a life of its own.

Is Lamendin a passive--and lucky--naif? Is he a born salesman who accidentally finds his calling? Is he a megalomaniac-in-waiting? I suspect that he might be a bit of all three, but his moments of confidence and fear do not add up to a character or an arc.

Along the way, Lamendin meets dozens of people, many with their eyes on the main chance. They are played with various levels of humor and competence by 15 performers, some of whom deserve much better. (It's always a pleasure to see George Morfogen, and I suspect Mitch Greenberg might make a more creditable Lamendin.)

Side Show

Watching the revised version of Side Show (book and lyrics by Bill Russell, music by Henry Krieger) at the Kennedy Center is a multilayered experience to fans of the original, particularly those who know the CD, and even the show, by heart. It's difficult to be totally immersed when part of you is doing a running compare-and-contrast. Hmm, I like the costumes a lot. Hmm, great set. Hmm, they're not Alice and Emily , but they're pretty good. Hmm, interesting to have the "freaks" actually depicted rather than left mostly to the imagination. Oh, wait, great lyric change. Hey, where did that song go? Hmm, that new song is a really good idea.

Emily Padgett, Erin Davie
Photo: Cade Martin

Little by little, however, the show entices you in, and little by little Erin Davie and Emily Padgett win you over on their own terms, and pretty soon, you realize, wow, this is good! Wow, this is very good! And by the time the final curtain goes down, you're completely involved. Bottom line: this revision is pretty darn wonderful.

Side Show is the story of Daisy (Padgett) and Violet (Davie) Hilton, conjoined twins who spent most of their lives on display, from side shows to vaudeville to the movies. They made a great deal of money but ended up working in a supermarket in Charlotte, NC, and died very close to penniless. Side Show follows--and somewhat fictionalizes--their lives from childhood to the beginning of their movie career.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Photo: Yoshi Kametani

The original production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which ran Off Broadway at the Jane Street Theater from February 1998 to April 2000, was a show I followed more closely than any other I can think of. Hedwig opened at around the time I began work on my dissertation, which was on rock musicals (and which later became my book, The Theatre Will Rock). Because I happened to be friendly with the show's press agents, I saw the show a whole bunch of times with a bunch of different people in the title role. I also interviewed people involved with the show, crashed the album release party and an MTV promo shoot, and, in the process, grew very fond of the production, which I thought about, troubled over, and wrote about a lot.
 
When news broke that Hedwig was being revived on Broadway--with Neil Patrick Harris in the title role, no less--my immediate reaction was to decide not to see it. This was not only because I felt way too connected to the original production to be kind or patient with the revival, but because the original production was sixteen fucking years ago--when, as Hedwig would say, I was in my early late twenties--and I have a long history of falling prey to nostalgia. Where did the time go, and all that. It didn't help matters that, frankly, I can be an oppositional, overly-critical asshole for no good reason. But friends, colleagues, and my grad students all gently told me that my refusal to see the show was absolute bullshit, so I relented and bought tickets. 

As usual, I was wrong and they were right. Of course the show was worth seeing again, not only because the revival is a very good production that has changed (matured?) for the better in some significant ways, but also because seeing Hedwig after all these years was less traumatic than I'd imagined. Yes, the revival made me wistful and a little sad, but then again, I expected that. In the end, even though I've heard all his jokes before, it sure was nice to catch up with such a dear old friend after so many years. Especially since he's grown up to be Neil Patrick Harris.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

When one monstrously talented person impersonates another monstrously talented person, the desire to resort to cliches doubles in intensity. And since seeing Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill on Tuesday evening, I admit I've been struggling with ways to talk about the show that don't resort to trite blathering about how incredible and heartbreaking Holiday was, or how incredible and heartbreaking McDonald's portrayal of her is.

But believe me when I tell you that every single blathery, trite, cliched superlative I can come up with applies here. At least when it comes to McDonald's performance, which is brilliant, sublime, superb, extraordinary.

The show itself is not quite as superlative, but I don't think that matters, at least not in this case. There have been other productions that I can't speak to: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill premiered in Atlanta in 1986 and opened Off Broadway at the Vineyard in the same year (S. Epatha Merkerson, later of Law & Order fame, took over for Lonette McKee as Holiday during that year-long run). It has been bouncing around the country in regional productions ever since. I can understand why--Lady Day is small and easily staged, and it allows for black, female actresses to take on a challenging, interesting character.

After all, Billie Holiday is, in the end, just the leading character of this show--a fictionalized one based closely on the real woman. What we see of Holiday in Lady Day is playwright Lanie Robertson's reimagining of a concert she gave to seven audience members at a rundown bar in South Philadelphia in March 1959. A few months later, Holiday would die at 44 of cirrhosis of the liver and heart disease, both the result of excessive drinking and heroin use. It has been pointed out by other critics that at this point in her life, Holiday probably would have been completely unintelligible, totally ravaged, impossible to listen to. It has also been pointed out that the real Holiday was a famously private performer who suffered recurring bouts of stage fright, and that she certainly wouldn't have chatted amicably and at great length between songs as she does here.