Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, on April 16, 1986, with direction by Woodie King Jr. and Reenie Upchurch as Billie Holiday.

[5] The Hollywood Playhouse (in California) produced Lady Day in October 1987, directed by Andre Ernotte, and with S. Epatha Merkerson reprising her role as Holiday.

Directed by Lonny Price, the production starred Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday and featured Shelton Becton as pianist Jimmy Powers.

[13] Audra McDonald received a 2016 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role in the broadcast.

In his review of the 2005 Long Wharf production for Variety, Frank Rizzo wrote: ...two-time Tony nominee Ernestine Jackson... presents the singer as a simultaneously strong and desperate figure who finds some solace in her songs, but more in her own personal “moonlight” of drugs, booze and memories.

Jackson nicely suggests rather than mimics the famous Holiday deeply lived sound in a show filled with more than a dozen tunes accompanied by an accomplished trio.

[20] In his review for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood said, it's worth putting up with the show's tackier (and duller) aspects for the pleasure of hearing Ms. McDonald breathe aching life into some of Holiday's greatest songs.

She has tamped down the lush bloom of her voice to suggest the withered state of Holiday's instrument during the last years of her career, but the sound remains tangy, expressive and rich.