Cue Online (Grahamstown)
Christina Kennedy
10 July 2009
The first – and most important – thing to realise before seeing this show is that it is not a musical tribute to Billie Holiday.
Anyone expecting a straightforward jazzy odyssey through Lady Day’s life, times and music may be disappointed.
What Nigel Vermaas’s play does is use the glorious, troubled, tragic Holiday as a springboard for an ancillary story: that of a reformatory warden who was inspired by the singer to change her life.
Life-changer
Holiday (Mwenya Kabwe) was locked up in a women’s reformatory for narcotics possession in the 1940s, and Vermaas has built a play speculating and expanding on the relationship she developed with her warden, Ellen, played here by Michele Maxwell.
Using Holiday as a secondary character, a catalyst, is an unusual and brave dramatic device for writer-director Vermaas to attempt. To a large extent, it works.
As a black woman who conquered appalling odds to triumph artistically (albeit perhaps not personally), Holiday undoubtedly did change people’s lives, in addition to having a seminal influence on the music world.
Her vast legacy is therefore effectively symbolised by homing in on a single woman and speculating about the impact the singer had on her.
The fairytale
However, it is a somewhat romanticised notion that these two very different women would connect across such a gaping divide, even though both have experienced some form of abuse. One is a foul-mouthed, coarse, petulant inmate; the other a prim and proper, albeit progressive and empathetic, guard. But if you suspend disbelief and surrender to the fairytale, it will beguile you.
The vast stage is split in two: on the one side, Maxwell sings Holiday songs and plays the piano, while a phantom-like, radiant and almost beatific Billie appears from beyond the grave, finally at peace. On the other side of the stage, we are taken back to the women’s reformatory, where the sulky singer and the warden swap confidences.
As the drama segues between the two settings, present and past, deft costume changes are pulled off with aplomb. Also helping to fill the cavernous stage is a massive screen on which visuals are projected, although not always to maximum effect. Sometimes, less is more.
The thrust of the play is how, through their exchanges and confidences, Holiday inspired Ellen to ditch her dreary job and return to music, and here we are reminded of what an incredible artist Maxwell is.
Lesser-known talent
Those who know her from her dramatic work, or even her role as Abigail in the e.tv soapie Scandal, may not be aware that she is an accomplished jazz singer as well. It is her character who sings most of the Holiday songs, such as Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child, with the occasional original recording thrown in.
Intriguingly, Kabwe, who plays Holiday, does not sing a single note – a reminder that this show does not pivot around her. This is a pity in a sense, as Kabwe demonstrated in the recent play Yellow Man that she has well defined acting chops and, had this role been meatier, she could have made a meal of it.
Tough life
Holiday’s rough life is alluded to; how abuse and hardship in her early years fed her vices and addictions in later life, leaving her open to exploitation. Sadly, these travails gave her the pedigree to truly sing the blues with conviction and soul. Despite her success, her tortured past dogged her until death.
While a one-dimensional homage to the Lady would not have done justice to her music and legacy on the 50th anniversary of her death, Do You Know Billie Holiday? leaves the audience yearning for a deeper glimpse into her soul.
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