Feb. 7, 2026: "Sheltered" at the Jewish Rep and "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" at Shea's Smith


What joy to see Buffalo's theater season springing to life again. It's as happy a development as having daylight after 5:30 p.m. once more.

Despite the weather, there were fewer empty seats than expected at the opening of the Jewish Repertory Theatre's "Sheltered" Thursday night in Getzville. Same on Friday night for "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," a MusicalFare production in Shea's Smith Theatre in otherwise deserted downtown.
(Things will get livelier on Feb. 13 when the Irish Classical Theatre Company debuts "A Skull in Connemara." Only a few seats remain for that one on opening weekend.)
At the Jewish Rep, shelter is a complicated concept with contemporary concerns in the darkening days of 1939. In the first act, in a startlingly mid-century modern living room in Providence, R.I., two Jewish couples are at odds over whether Americans, sheltered and secure on this side of the Atlantic, should be complacent or alarmed about the dire news coming from Europe.
In the second act, the alarmed couple is in a hotel room in Vienna, where anxiety abounds. On a mission to ferry 40 children to shelter in the U.S., their efforts become a multiple version of Sophie's Choice.
Among the cast members we know best, Rebecca Elkin, in classic 1930s waved hair, has an Artie Award nomination moment when she slams a sheaf of children's application folders to the hotel room floor. Meanwhile, in the first act, Jewish Community Center performing arts director Adam Yellen, in a mustache instead of his usual beard, gets to play the bad guy -- the smug isolationist.
Which is not to say the other players aren't memorable. Maria Pedro, seen two months ago in MusicalFare's "White Christmas," is marvelously tipsy as the isolationist's wife. Gretchen Didio, who we recall from "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," also at MusicalFare, is an Austrian mother heartbreakingly torn over sending her young son away. And Peter Horn, the title character in Road Less Traveled Theatre's "Mr. Wolf" last fall, is tall and steadying in a boxy suit as the humanitarian husband. "Sheltered" continues Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays through March 1.
The legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday finds a different kind of shelter in her final concert in 1959 at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a seedy nightclub in Philadelphia. It's a familiar stop for her -- she salutes the offstage owner -- and a sanctuary from the emotional abuse and discrimination she's suffered since she was a girl. Between songs, she tells stories, alternately defiant and devastating.
Acclaimed local vocalist Alex McArthur is Billie and she's immediately dazzling when she steps to the microphone in a tight white gown. Wisely, she keeps her own voice. As always, she's a delight.
So is her constant collaborator, consummate jazz pianist George Caldwell as Holiday's band leader Jimmy, who has to coax Billie out onto the stage more than once. Performances, with seating at cabaret tables, continue through Feb. 15.

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