UNVEILING THE LEGACY OF Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz and blues vocalist, left an indelible mark on the music industry with her soulful voice and raw emotional performances. Now, in the gripping stage production of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, audiences have the opportunity to delve into the captivating life and final moments of this iconic artist.

We had the privilege of sitting down with Zahra Newman, who stars as the great Billie Holiday in the highly anticipated South Australian Theatre Company production, to find out how it feels to play such a cultural icon.

WHAT IS THE PREMISE OF LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL?

The play is set in 1959 over the course of one night, in a bar in Philadelphia. The premise is that this is one of the last performances Billie Holiday gives before her death. It’s almost like a snapshot of her life – it gives you some insight into who she was as a person.

WHY DO YOU THINK BILLIE HOLIDAY HAS SUCH A LEGACY?

Partly, it has to do with the time in which she lived and worked. It was quite a fractious time in America, particularly regarding race relations, and I think Billie had a powerful way of threading personal experiences through her music. She was able to imbue a lot of her songs with a kind of unembellished, crude brutality that reflected the realities of her lived experience.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE PLAYING HER?

I saw this production on Broadway in 2014 with Audra McDonald and it totally took my breath away. I thought, I want to do this so badly! So, in that vein, I'm incredibly grateful to Mitchell Butel and State Theatre Company South Australia for the opportunity. Playing a person from history and a cultural icon is always going to be difficult, but it’s a privilege and an honour I am excited by.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU WERE INTRODUCED TO HER MUSIC?

It would have been when I was a teenager - that’s when I discovered jazz and blues. I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and others. While I didn’t know a lot about them as singers, I just knew that it was the kind of music I was drawn to. It felt juicy to me.

WHY DO YOU THINK BILLIE’S STORY WORKS SO WELL IN THE THEATRE SPACE?

Often, with public figures, you're exposed to a two-dimensional 'idea' of the person. To see a show that brings together the public, familiar parts of a celebrity’s life with more intimate details of their personality is engrossing. Also, the intimate structure of the show with one person and a band is very special. Hopefully, it will have a bit of everythingpathos, humour and entertainment.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Aug 25 – Sep 9.

For tickets: statetheatrecompany.com.au

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Film review

fantasies and their guilt, and how they transform in the aftermath.

Former enfant-terrible filmmaker Frank takes his besties to a country guest house outside Dublin for his birthday weekend, leaving their assorted children and myriad commitments at home. His (supposedly) loving wife Lizzie is there, as well as stayat-home parent Beatrice and doctor Conor, and teacher Eva and gardener Shay, and when they’re all high as kites, it’s Frank who suggests that they partner-swap. No regrets, no shame, and for one night only. Yeah, right.

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Despite the decidedly difficult nature of every member of this sextet (especially the hardly amiable Frank), Mackenzie finds great compassion for them all, and it’s almost a relief that this doesn’t descend into some kind of horror-movie situation where everyone starts murdering everyone else. No, here the stakes aren’t these characters' very lives, but their emotions. And surely that’s scary enough?

ALCARRÀS (M)

Director Carla Simón’s follow-up to her Summer 1993 (2017) is an ensemble drama featuring a mostly unknown cast, and while there’s much quietly understated power here, it tends to go on a bit.

However, it’s hard to know where this filmmaker could have cut. Simón’s tale takes place in the Catalan town of the title (and in the Western dialect Lleidatà) with players from the region, and centres upon an extended family of peach farmers who have worked there since shortly after the Spanish Civil War.

We first meet young Iris (Ainet Jounou), who’s playing in an abandoned car with her twin cousins until the vehicle’s removed by an excavator. This is the ominous first sign of what’s to come, and while the older actors get higher billing, she’s the one who dominates the proceedings, watching the bewildering adult events and serving as a cheeky Greek Chorus.

In the longtime home of the clan, Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) is horrified to discover that his elderly father Rogelio (Josep

Abad) never signed any contract, and that, therefore, the house they’ve always lived in technically belongs to the rich Pinyols. They’ll need to be out by the end of the summer and their final, traditional harvest, and we watch as they struggle to deal - or not deal - with what’s looming. There are so many characters here: Quimet’s teen son Roger (Albert Bosch) works and parties hard; teen daughter Mariona (Xènia Roset) fears losing her friends; their Mum Dolors (Anna Otin) worries and argues; and although it looks like Rogelio might be in the first stages of dementia, his withdrawn state’s more to do with his sense of awful responsibility for the family’s situation. And how he naively thought that common decency meant that they would never have to leave this beautiful place.

With a keen sense of naturalism (lived-in locations, faded clothes, sometimes wobbly camera), Simón’s film is less openly political than, say, the UK films of Ken Loach - but it’s no less angry. Yet that anger is rarely expressed, and is left to simmer away in this gorgeous landscape that’s just waiting to be destroyed by monstrous developers.

Alcarràs is in cinemas now