Audra McDonald last won a best actress Tony Award in 2012 for her role in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.

Five-time Tony Award-winning singer Audra McDonald, just finishing a 30-city tour, is heading back to Broadway next week as legendary American jazz singer Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.

The musical is based on one of Holiday’s last performances, when she was in poor health, singing in a small, intimate Philadelphia bar before a handful of people just a month before she died in 1959.

The show debuted off-Broadway nearly 30 years ago. It begins a 10-week run at the Circle in the Square theatre with previews on March 25 and opening night on April 13.

With her sultry voice and distinctive style, Holiday is considered one of the greatest jazz singers ever. She was nicknamed ‘Lady Day’ by saxophonist Lester Young.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill depicts Holiday’s life through more than a dozen songs such as God Bless the Child, Crazy He Calls Me, Strange Fruit and What a Little Moonlight Can Do, and reminiscences with the audience.

Everyone in a way feels like they know Billie Holiday because she has touched whoever listens to her

“Everyone in a way feels like they know Billie Holiday because she has touched whoever listens to her,” said McDonald, 43, who also appeared in NBC’s The Sound of Music Live! and had a recurring role in the TV medical drama Private Practice.

Despite an impoverished birth and shattered childhood, Holiday’s extraordinary vocal talent propelled her to stardom in a racially-divided America in the 1930s and 1940s.

She died a poor drug addict at the age of 44.