LADY DAY PLAYS BOOMERPDX BAR AND GRILL

“Most men won’t go to live theater with their wives,” was an observation my wife shared.

We were walking out of Portland Center Stage at the Armory on NW 11th by Powell’s Tuesday night when she said it. I was revved up after seeing LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL.

“Did I ever thank you for keeping the season tickets after your mom died? Or for being a great theater date?” I said.

Her observation followed, true or not. Men who don’t take time for live theater miss an important insight not found anywhere else.

‘What might that be?’ I hear you ask.

From Husbanding 101:

If the wife has passion for the performing arts, she will share it.

With you.

Show enthusiasm for live music and live theater and anything else living she embraces, like plants and dogs. Be her embrace partner and she will be a better sports fan, if she’s not already.

So I thanked her as an Embrace Partner after seeing Deidrie Henry transform into Billie Holiday for ninety minutes, the Lady Day who slurred and wove her way through her last show on gin and heroin in South Philadelphia.

I flashed back to Elvis near the end when he played MacArthur Court on the UofO campus. The 1977 concert didn’t pull me in.

Seeing him sweating it out in a tight jumpsuit would have ruined my vision of Elvis for life, a vision without girdles and capes.

Not so far back, I flashed to Whitney Houston and felt a pang of something. Bobby Brown?

A man named Sonny was Lady Day’s Bobby Brown, the man who hooked her on horse, the love of her life.

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I look forward to ‘Play Night: Downtown Portland’ as an immersion into the public life I avoided as an unmarried man. A date in those days was a walk around the block, or a bike ride.

My mom used to say, “Who do you think you’ll date riding a bike instead of driving a car?”

My answer was, “A bike rider.”

This is the same mom who called during home birth labor with my first kid.

“Don’t you think you should be in the hospital?” she said.

“Well yes, I think so, but I can’t just abandon my wife in the middle of labor,” I said.

I drive a car these days, and aimed it toward Portland on W99. Once we got on I-5 the traffic south stood still while we blew past the other direction going seventy. It clogged at the Marquam Bridge, but cleared on the left lane to 405.

Another standstill came with traffic crowding right on 405 for the Beaverton exit. The left lane was all clear to the Everett ramp.

Since we were early I turned toward the new apartments getting built on 13th between Marshall and Front Ave. Block after block of big box apartments. Where was the parking lot?

After the tour I parked on the street, bought a ticket-preventing window sticker from a machine in the middle of the block, and headed toward the Armory.

But first, a Powell’s City of Books review. We walked from the corner entry on 10th and Burnside to the diagonal corner exit on 11th and Couch, past new books, recommended books, used books. Most important we cruised the non-fiction kiosk to see where my memoir in the works ‘Licking Cancer In The Beaver State’ would fit.

Turns out it fit everywhere.

With a decaf coffee and two cookies in hand I found my seat, but it didn’t feel right. The playbill for the night promised ‘audience participation.’

The last time I saw an audience participation show was Cirque du Soleil and a guy lost his shirt to a clown who took it on stage with him.

I wore two shirts on Lady Day night, just in case.

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Our usual seats are in Row C, three back from the stage, safe from any ‘audience participation.’

Tonight Row A was stage left, Row B on stage right. Row C was the front row, a first for me, like the time I actually knew the pilot flying a plane I was on.

Front row center with a narrow space between my knees and the stage riser? Still safe from ‘audience participation.’ No one was dodging the shoes and legs packing this row.

I got comfortable. Put my coffee and cookies on the stage when my Embrace Partner wife reminded me I wasn’t at the Sasquatch Music Festival campsite.

I looked back at a fast filling theater for the ‘tacky police,’ and moved my stuff. No one noticed.

Lights dimmed, music started, and like Foo Fighter Dave Grohl cutting loose a few measured screams before taking the stage, I head a voice yell up from the downstairs set on stage, “I can’t do it. I can’t. Not tonight.”

Then Deidrie/Billie, bent over and pulling herself up the stairs in a mighty struggle between balance and booze, took over.

From imbd.com:

It’s 1959 in a seedy bar in Philadelphia, and Billie Holiday is giving one of her last performances interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences to project a riveting portrait of the lady and her music 4 months before her death.

She sang and talked trash like an angel flying too close to the ground.

From Broadway World:

The performance she gives is part concert, part confessional. It traces her life — from her cruel childhood through her abusive personal relationships, multiple arrests, and drug and alcohol abuse — through story, humor, and music. She also provides a glimpse into the brutal racism she encountered, especially in the South, during the time of Jim Crow. This is a powerful, and often devastating, piece of theatre.

But the devastation isn’t the whole story. LADY DAY has an unmistakable feeling of triumph. The credit for that goes to Deidrie Henry, who gives a dynamite performance as Holiday. As she began to sing, Portland Center Stage melted away and I was sitting in that club in Philadelphia watching the final performance of one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.

I had the same feeling. I’ve lived in South Philly. It felt right in Portland. I’ve seen wasted people reviewing regrets. Deidrie had it down. But I’ve never heard the voice channeling the pain of Billie Holiday in her songs.

The message I felt came from being in the presence of greatness, whether it was Deidrie or Billie, and a sorrow hard to imagine. But not so hard from the front row.

I watched her move from table to bar, then off stage to Row A in the wings. Perfect, I thought. Then she’ll get back on stage, go over to Row B on the other side. Audience participation fulfilled.

Except she started down the narrow aisle between my front row and the stage, stopping now and then, patting a shoulder, then moving along.

Moving along until she stopped in front of me while I scrunched up to let her get by.

What is theater etiquette in times like this? Look up, look away? Look down? Before I decided, I didn’t need to worry. She sat on my lap and we looked across at each other. It’s theater, right?

So I cuddled up as much as she did while my wife knew right where to look. She likes seeing how her man reacts in new situations.

This was new and she loved it.

This situation? I’m in the middle of Portland in a front row seat with Billie Holiday on my lap.

Of course I’m in the middle of Portland with Lady Day on my lap. It was a Tuesday, where else would I be but sharing the spotlight with a stage star.

In a breakthrough moment I realized I was both the symbol of what she’d faced touring the 1950’s south, and a safe haven in 2018 Portland. ‘Lap dance’ didn’t cross my mind during my first stage appearance? Maybe once.

I held onto her in case part of the audience participation was acting like a falling down drunk. I’d be Billie’s hero for one night, a better man than her Sonny.

I smiled, she winked, or had something in her eye. Either way it was a magical moment in live theater packed with more feeling than I expected. Then she moved on. The show ended with her off-stage.

The band finished with a scorcher of a song and took a bow. The audience answered with a loud standing ovation. Then Deidrie came out to the roar of the crowd.

During her curtsy I leaned in for a high five. When she answered with her high five the volume amped up another notch.

In fantasy theater I turned to the crowd from the first row, stood on my chair and waved the crowd quiet, then told them they have the power to change America for a better outcome than the America Billie Holiday lived and died in.

VOTE!

Then Deidrie would lead us through a blasting Hell You Talmbout, the song David Byrne ended his set with at Sasquatch. One, two, three:

“Lady Day.”

“Say Her Name.”