Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Lady/Speak/Easy
31 Jan 2000 - The Globe and Mail:
"SUBJECTS & OBJECTS: Lady still singing the blues" (by Tertius)

SUBJECTS & OBJECTS
- By Tertius

Lady still singing the blues

Tertius recalls with some nostalgia the days when supple­voiced torch singers had more on their mind than putting together their own promotional Web site with RealAudio clips.

But the past is past and we must live in the age we're given. Still, it's nice to indulge in some simple-hearted time travelling, and that was the purpose at hand when, last Thursday night, down on the chilly edge of New York's East Village, Canadian playwright Sean Power's theatre-as-seance piece Lady/Speak/Easy opened at the legendary experimental theatre haven La Mama.

"If it were up to me, I'd be home," grumbled one googly­eyed older fellow, who seemed confused about where, indeed, he was. No wonder, for the slicing wind along East 4th Street could disorient the heartiest New Yorker. The denizens waiting inside the cramped lobby stamped their feet to keep warm, then walked a few flights into La Mama's cozy upstairs cafe space, where the spirit of 1936 Harlem came alive.

It was a ghost story we were after, and we were rewarded for our interest. Lady Day herself, the great Billie Holiday - or a talented facsimile thereof named Bemshi Shearer - appeared before our eyes and nestled into our brains with that honeysuckle purring. Hooligans in spats and whores in high heels stomped up and down the aisles, but it was Ms. Shearer - blessed with a bewitching warble - who stole the show and our hearts.

The actress's proud father watched from the audience as his daughter enacted Lady Day's self-destruction with drugs and drink and an addiction to bad men. Oliver Shearer, a jazz musician who knew Billie for the last 10 years of her life, reflected afterwards on the merits of his daughter's performance.

"Wasn't she good?" he beamed, until the conversation turned to the play's presentation of his dear, departed friend. "Well, I didn't like the story line so much. The drinking and the drugs. Billie told me about that, and about this man who wasn't so nice to her. But I didn't see that." He looked away, wistful. "I knew her from a different side."