The colorful and wacky cast of Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway mug for the camera.
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sweet Sixties fashions, but the experiences are all the same! “To me, it was about finding the core of this amazing woman, who had an extraordinary gift but was shy about being the means to share it with the world. She’s fascinating because she is a brilliant songwriter, but never wanted to be up front. And thankfully for us, she came to peace with that and we’ve gotten to experience her music through her. It’s one of the things that make her so special. Her vulnerability became her strength.” In contrast, the tragic life of Billie Holiday is presented in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Broadway legend Audra McDonald recreates Holiday’s timeless music as well as her rough offstage life. “She had a singular style,” points out director Lonny Price, “and was considered by her peers—Frank Sinatra, for example—as the finest singer of her generation. I hope it makes people think about our history—white and African-American history—in the first part of the last century, and how far—or not—we’ve come.” “Billie had a Dickensian life,” says Price, “but she had no self-pity. In fact, she used humor to get through. Telling some of the worst personal history imaginable and laughing at it was her survival. We looked for the humor and through it found the humanity of the woman.” “Among other things, it's an exploration of how we treat our celebrities these days who have addiction issues,” adds Price. “We build them up, watch them destroy themselves and then martyr them. But where are we when they are in crisis? We see them perform and watch them fall down. Sometimes, we abandon them on their downward spiral, and then rush to their funerals and talk about how sad it is that they died so young.” Most of these onstage history lessons use the past to evoke present-day emotions. But the song-and-dance revue After Midnight takes another tack. Director/choreographer Warren Carlyle uses the music of Duke Ellington and others as the soundtrack to a virtual history of popular dance, evoking the heyday of the Cotton Club. “I didn’t want to make a museum piece,” Carlyle insists. “I wanted to create this show through a 2014 lens—what would the best possible floor show be? What would it contain?
Photos: bullets over broadway, jason bell; A raisin in the sun, brigitte lacombe
A hardworking and hopeful Walter Lee Younger (played by Denzel Washington) in A Raisin in the Sun.
IN New YORK | june 2014 | innewyork.com
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