Standing ovation for power play inspired by the life of Nina Simone
Black is the Color of my Voice at the Corn Exchange, Newbury, on Wednesday, September 7. Review by ROBIN STRAPP
Black is the Color of my Voice, inspired by the life of Nina Simone, is powerfully brought to life by the amazing Apphia Campbell.
This is a moving story told through a poignant mix of drama and song of the legendary fictional life of Mena Bordeaux, her alter ego.
We first meet her in a sparse room with a simple bed, desk and chair during a three-day Liberian ritual retreat. She has shut the world out, following the death of her father, to contemplate her life. “Until you face who you were in the past, you cannot become what you are supposed to be in the future,” she tells us.
She talks to a photograph of her late father, recalling her early days when as a three-year-old she played on the piano her mother’s favourite hymn. Her ambition is to become the first black classical pianist to play at Carnegie Hall, where she encounters her first major experience of racism.
Her parents sitting in the front row were asked to give up their seats for a white family and Mena refuses to play until they are allowed to retake their seats.
Meanwhile she is also performing “the Devil’s Music” as her mother calls the blues in the nightclubs.
Her memories are recounted through objects she has brought in a small brown suitcase. The love letters from her first love Eddie to her violent abusive husband Arthur.
Simone’s emotive songs are cleverly integrated into her performance including I Put a Spell on You, I’ve Got My Man and Love Me or Leave Me.
She becomes strongly involved in the civil rights movement forcefully expressed with the song Mississippi Goddam, written as a result of the murders of the black Till and Evers.
It’s one of many in protest including the bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama or the assassination of Martin Luther King.
This tour-de-force performance by Apphia Campbell embraced the character with such sincerity, honesty and a voice that’s so rich and warm that is both engaging and totally captivating.
Ending with the song Feeling Good, this was an outstandingly impressive production that receive a long standing ovation from the packed Corn Exchange audience.
