Review: Black is the color of my voice at Adelaide College of the Arts, Adelaide 

Review by Lisa Lanzi

Apphia Campbell's solo tour de force was inspired by the life and music of Nina Simone and won a “pick of the week” award for its Adelaide premiere in 2023.  It is easy to see why this accolade was bestowed and I am enormously grateful to have been able to view the work this year.

This production has existed since 2013, penned by Apphia Campbell herself.  The show has toured widely across the globe including Shanghai, Edinburgh, Oxford, and London’s West End, and now a return season in Adelaide.  Rather than relying on an impersonation of Nina Simone, Campbell has created Mena Bordeaux, a persona living a life parallel to Simone’s.  The work is further enhanced by stunning renditions of some of the artist’s songs like “I Put A Spell On You”, “Feeling Good”, and “Mississippi Goddam”.   

Self-isolating in a hotel room on a three-day mission to cleanse herself of alcohol and cigarettes, Mena’s life unfolds as a reflection of Nina Simone’s in an utterly beautiful homage that is both chillingly present and powerful.  The character reminisces about her deceased father, an abusive husband, racism, activism, and music.  Like Simone, Mena Bordeaux is a gifted classical pianist who aimed for fame on the world’s concert stages and was mesmerised by the Bach catalogue.  Later, diving into ‘the devil’s music’ of jazz, blues, R&B, pop, and soul genera meant she could earn a living and perhaps return to study classical music.

Nina Simone was famous as a singer, songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger.  She also became very active in the black civil rights movement in America.  Similarly Campbell catapults her character into rage-fuelled activism after a visceral reaction to shocking, racially-targeted killings, including the fatal shooting of Dr Martin Luther King.  As an actor, Campbell is spellbinding.  This work includes characterisations of a mother, father, abusive husband, and a loving past boyfriend.  As Campbell inhabits these characters, physicality shifts, vocal range and delivery is altered and suddenly before us are these ‘others’.  Even while donning the iconic Nina Simone head wrap, as Mena this actor commands the stage and the audience cannot tear their eyes from her.  The script ingeniously weaves historically accurate material about Nina Simone around Campbell’s personal interpretations of those facts to show her character’s responses and thought processes.  Campbell has admitted that “the thing I’ve always wanted to live in this piece is in the truth of it …”.  Her flawless acting certainly embodies a complex, talented African American woman living in a dynamic period of growth and change for the US.  

Added to Campbell’s undeniable acting ability is a singing voice of great range that soars or whispers as needed, and simply takes your breath away.  Once again, without imitating Simone, Campbell manages to render the guts and spirit of the original singer but retains her own vocal identity.  Directors Arran Hawkins & Nate Jacobs have maintained a simplicity in the staging and deftly handled the piece with subtlety and compassion, all the while allowing Campbell to shine.  The songs are interwoven throughout the text so that they are innately relevant to a particular narrative moment.  Some are performed as if on stage within a bright spotlight, others are fragments and sung as the character rummages through her suitcase, or paces, or looks at old love letters.  

In her autobiography (1992) I Put A Spell On You, Nina Simone wrote: “I felt more alive then than I feel now because I was needed, and I could sing something to help my people".  Campbell has captured the vital essence of the famed singer in both her writing and her stellar performance, and sadly, the world still needs reminders about the horror of bigotry.  

Black Is The Colour of My Voice is touring widely this year - catch it if you can.  This is a captivating work deserving of mainstage billing and high praise.