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| Al Kirk, Cecilia Norfleet. |
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| Roger Robinson, Cecilia Norfleet. |
This show, which Clive Barnes
called “unpolished,” was an excursion into the anguished life of Black jazz
stylist Billie Holiday (Cecilia Norfleet), singing star of the 30s and 40s. She suffered the shame of rape at 10, prostitution at 15, exploitation by her white
managers, maltreatment by her lovers, drug addiction, incarceration, exclusion
from New York nightclubs, and brutal police treatment while on a hospital
deathbed.
The episodic work, one of several about the singer that would arrive on local stages over the coming years, is set in the framework of a 1930s amateur night at a Harlem théâtre, presided over by a ubiquitous M.C. (Roger Robinson) named Flim Flam, who also appears in several of the scenes.
A tone of angry militancy toward White society pervaded
the production, which cast Black actors—in whiteface—as White characters. Rosetta
Le Noire was one of the better-known cast members.
Martin Gottfried thought the
musical aspects so good that he called Lady
Day “a stage adventure that is original, theatrical, exciting and
intelligent.” Most of his fellow critics, however, agreed with Walter Kerr, who
assessed the show as an over-sentimentalized “amateur night” that failed to
dramatize its thesis. Jerry Tallmer missed the fabled humor of the real Billie
Holiday. And Jack Kroll considered the show “ponderous, tin-tongued, and
dramatically inert.”
Several lamented the casting of
Norfleet as Holiday, complaining that she made no attempt to replicate the late
singer’s distinctive sound. Holiday’s own songs, only a few of which were
interpolated into the production, were sung by others, among them Robinson
doing “Lover Man” in drag.