Black is the Color of My Voice @ The Customs House, South Shields - March 10

It was a decade ago when Apphia Campbell devised, directed and starred in her one-woman show Black is the Color of My Voice. Since then the production has toured from Shanghai to New York via the Edinburgh Fringe, London's West End and South Shields.

It was 2016 when Campbell first appeared at the Customs House down by the Tyne. This evening the production returned to South Tyneside with a new performer taking the role of Nina Simone, Florence Odumosu. A simple stage set - a bed, a cabinet, a couple of chairs, a telephone, a suitcase - welcomed Mena Bordeaux, the pseudonym Campbell chose to tell the story of the woman, the musician and civil rights activist, Ms Nina Simone. 

The absence of an on-stage upright piano indicated Odumosu would sing to the accompaniment of recorded music. The narrative arc encompassed a young Simone (at the age three she astonished her mother by picking out a melody at the piano) to teenage love, to an abusive relationship, to the church, to the discrimination she met with at every turn. 

A sold out Customs House listened intently to Mena's story. Mena/Nina sang many familiar (make that world famous) songs: I Put a Spell on You (the Tyneside audience making the connection with Burdon, Price and co.), I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free, Feeling Good. 

Selma, Montgomery, Martin Luther King, few in the audience could be ignorant of the political context in which Florence Odumosu told Nina Simone's story. Black is the Color of My Voice is the story of unimaginable inhumanity visited upon so many. It is a story for our times...Mississippi Goddam.  Russell