Crossroads still carrying the torch for Lady Day

 

We just can’t resist a tragic hero.

Of course, we love the rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, anyone-can-be-president fables. Those stories are a part of our collective DNA. But we are also fascinated by and drawn to the flip side; we are riveted by the stories of sympathetic characters who might have had it all, but for demons that prove too formidable.

Near the very top of a long list of just such beloved but self-destructive artistic geniuses is Billie Holiday, the legendary singer whose short life was plagued by addiction, personal tragedy and violence. A new play, receiving a production at the Crossroads Theatre Company, is both an imaginary evening with the singer and a portrait of her descent into the haze of drugs and alcohol that eventually killed her.

The central conceit of "Yesterdays: An Evening with Billie Holiday" is that the audience is in a nightclub watching Holliday’s act. Located on the performance spectrum somewhere between a tribute concert and one-woman drama, the play rests squarely on the shoulders of Vanessa Rubin who, as Lady Day, takes the audience on a journey both through a single evening’s performance with Holiday and along the downward spiral that ended in her death.

The accomplished jazz trio on stage opens the show, not coincidentally, with “The Lady is a Tramp,” establishing their musical bona fides early and decisively. They are somewhat less accomplished when it comes to acting chops – both the pianist and the drummer play small parts in the drama and are better musicians than thespians.

Rubin arrives on stage as Holiday, a little late, a little flustered and more than a little defensive. She quickly launches into some of the singer’s best known songs -- “Good Morning, Heartache,” “Them There Eyes,” and “God Bless the Child” -- in a clear and lilting alto that has no hint of the signature vocal phrasings that are so identified with Lady Day. Early in the evening, while chatting with the audience between songs, Rubin plays Billie as tipsy but still very much in control.

But as the evening progresses and the singer's chats become more and more disturbing, Rubin’s vocal stylings begin to resemble the iconic voice with which everyone is familiar, almost as if the tremulous warble dripping with anguish that we so identify with Holiday was a direct result of her pain and her addiction.

As Holiday, Rubin does her best to channel the diva’s inner struggles without resorting to a full-on impression. With the oversized gardenia in her hair, the slightly shabby gown and the wobbly, drunken mannerisms that grow more and more pronounced as the evening progresses, she is recognizable as Billie, but never resorts to a caricature of the singer.

Even as Holiday loses her footing, both literal and metaphorical, near the end of the evening, it is clear that actress, the playwright and the director all have deep reverence and sympathy for this brilliant but troubled artist who, ultimately, did not have the strength to save herself.

Audiences interested in Billie Holiday, jazz, or the dark period of fairly recent American history during which African-Americans performers working in the Jim Crow South were subjected to humiliation on top of humiliation, will be fascinated by "Yesterdays."