Belvoir presents Tony-award winning hit Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, a musical play about the life of jazz great Billie Holiday, starring AACTA Award-winner Zahra Newman, on from 14 September to 15 October 2023. 

Directed by Mitchell Butel, and written by Lanie Robertson, Newman (The Book of Mormon, GWB’s Girl From The North Country) both stars as the musical legend behind some of the most famous jazz hits, and is also Associate Director of the show. 

It’s 1959, in a bar in South Philadelphia. It’s a bit rundown. You wouldn’t know it, but we’re in a moment of history – one of Billie Holiday’s legendary last performances.

As she sings her set (and it’s the greats – ‘Taint Nobody’s Business If I Do, Strange Fruit, What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Easy Livin’, God Bless the Child, and more) she shares the story of her life – a bit risqué, humorous, political, ecstatic, tragic. Lady Day comes to the fore as she looks back on a life, on an era.