The colourful version of Billie Holiday's break has it that she staggered, wild and hungry, into a Harlem speakeasy and danced so appallingly that the pianist was moved to ask: "Honey, do you sing?" The more mundane truth is that she probably started performing in a small club on New York's Upper West Side around 1932. What is certain is that she never appeared in a subterranean car park in Derby. She can be found there now - or at least her earthly representative, in the form of the musical actress Dawn Hope, can be.
Heroin, hunger and love gone wrong set a strange agenda for seasonal entertainment, but Playhouse artistic director Mark Clements has had a strange season, hosting Cinderella upstairs and Billie in the basement. Derby Playhouse being located in a shopping precinct, it stands to reason that the studio should be a short detour across an underground car park. Yet for 90 intense, unbroken minutes, you are prepared to believe that this bunker is a smoky enclave of Southside Philadelphia.
The year is 1959, the place Emerson's pokey jazz joint, where Philadelphia's most famous singing export has come full circle. A dizzy descent from jazz diva to jailbird has seen the singer they called Lady Day degenerate to Lady Yesterday - a convicted drug felon legally prohibited from earning a crust. Back home to croak again through the songs she no longer cares about, Holiday keeps singing because it's the only way she can be sure she's still alive.
Clements caught the original production of Lanie Robertson's compelling musical monologue off Broadway and, having spent time in Harlem and Philadephia, his mesmerising production has the ring of authenticity. Dawn Hope produces a sensationally well-modulated performance, never allowing the sparkling transcendence of the songs to become tarnished by the morass of misery that surrounds them.
Holiday always insisted that the right accompanist was the one who would help you feel your way through the songs, in which case Warren Wills is a more than reliable guide. Exuding a sullen presence as Holiday's current partner, he stares mournfully at the piano keys while the singer, in her reverie, addresses him as her fatal first love, the spineless husband who introduced her to heroin.
Holiday's mother said her special talent was to pick out the rottenest apple and cling to it - but then Strange Fruit was always Billie's taste.
Until January 20. Box office: 0133-236 3275.
