The Circle in the Square has been converted into a cabaret style setting to suggest the Philadelphia venue where Holiday is entertaining in 1959, about four months before she is to die. On stage is a band consisting of Shelton Becton, conductor, portraying Jimmy Powers at the piano, Clayton Craddock on drums and George Farmer on bass. McDonald enters to applause, and magically becomes Holiday.

The show is both exhilarating and sad, the former because of the joy of our hearing songs as Holiday sang them and our appreciation for McDonald’s remarkable skill. In the course of the appearance she sings such renowned numbers as “When a Woman Loves a Man,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Pig Foot (And a Bottle of Beer),” “T’aint Nobody’s Business If I do,” and, of course, “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit.” At one point she brings her Chihuahua on stage with her and the shown-off, cuddled pet licks her face.

In telling about her life between songs, she is getting more and more zonked out from her alcohol and drug addictions. She summons humor to tell of an incident under the racial discrimination she endured. When denied the right to use a bathroom despite her arguing, she let go a gusher onto the floor much to her feeling of triumph and the consternation of the woman who had refused permission. But in a momentary acting tour de force, McDonald eases tellingly into a somber, sad expression that reflects the reality of what she and others of her race have been subjected to throughout her life. That leads to her singing the piercing, haunting “Strange Fruit,” which she popularized as a protest against lynching.