Trailer To HBO’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Starring Audra McDonald
Posted by Wilson Morales
January 8, 2016
HBO has released the trailer to Audra McDonald‘s Tony-winning performance as Billie Holiday in Broadway’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” which will premiere on Saturday, March 12, 2016 on HBO NOW and HBO GO.
Filmed last December in New Orleans’ Cafe Brasil with a live audience during an eight day production schedule, “Lady Day” is a 1959-set play centering on one of Billie Holiday’s final public appearances. It takes place in Philadelphia four months before the singer’s death. The 90-minute show includes such songs as “God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “When a Woman Loves a Man,” “Foolin’ Myself,” “Don’t Explain,” “Somebody’s On My Mind,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness,” “Baby Doll” and more.
The Broadway production of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill opened April 13, 2014 and after several extensions closed on October 5, 2014. McDonald was joined onstage by a jazz trio led by Shelton Becton as well as by a Chihuahua named Roxie.
McDonald made Tony Awards history in 2015, becoming the first woman to win Tony Awards in all four eligible acting categories. She now holds the record for the most Tony Award wins (6) of any actor in competitive Tony categories.
McDonald previously won Tony Awards for her work in “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” “Carousel,” “Master Class,” “Ragtime” and “A Raisin in the Sun.”
The broadcast version of “Lady Day” was directed by Lonny Price, who also did the Broadway version, and produced by Allen Newman and Two Hands Entertainment with Executive Producers Jeff Rowland, Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley.
