Now Showing
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, Lanie Robertson's oft-revived play, is set in 1959 in a Philadelphia bar where fading jazz star Billie Holiday sings her signatures songs and jokes with the audience, but her boozing and drugs send her tottering towards an onstage meltdown. The production is graced by a fine jazz trio and the rich vocals of Nadeen Holloway in the title role, but Holloway's energy and warmth seem at odds with Lady Day's tortured personality and director John Pryor hasn't developed the character's nuances. (Through March 27, M Ensemble Company, 12320 West Dixie Highway, North Miami. 305-895-0335)
It's all there -- the sooty buildings, the sunless streets, the cockney rabble, and the little boy who committed the cardinal sin of asking his orphanage turnkeys for some more gruel ("Please, sir, I want some more"). It's all there in the traveling production of Lionel Bart's 45-year-old musical Oliver!, that is, but a lot of the grace, the wit, and the emotion of the original. Be forewarned. It takes a crack sound system to deliver all the twisted vowels and dropped consonants of working-class Brit English. Still, the powerful story breaks through. Renata Renee Wilson as the doomed Nancy is a heartbreaker when she sings "As Long as He Needs Me," her paean of loyalty to her abusive boy friend, the scary Bill Sikes (Shane R. Tanner). Young Colin Bates as the Artful Dodger, Oliver's nimble, slippery pickpocketing friend, is an electric presence every time he takes center stage. Adrian Vaux's sets capture all of the oppressive gloom of post-industrial London (the society that made Marx a Marxist), with just enough space for little fires to break out from time to time. (Through March 20 at the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, 561-832-SHOW)