★★★★★
Lanie Robertson wrote this astonishing play after a boyfriend told him that he had seen Billie Holiday in 1959 in “a little dive” in north Philadelphia. Holiday stumbled in “quite high”, carrying her chihuahua and a glass full of booze. She and her piano player performed a dozen or so songs for an audience of seven people before staggering back out. “The image of the world’s greatest jazz singer being so undervalued is an image that has always haunted me,” says Robertson.
If Robertson wrote this to rid himself of that ghost, in doing so he has created a piece of theatre that will haunt every one of us in the audience. I was spellbound from the moment Audra McDonald arrived on stage, seemingly