Apphia Campbell: Black is the Color of my Voice @ Northern Stage, Newcastle - Oct. 6

Apphia Campbell (actor, playwright)

A sparse setting (see graphic taken before the performance) was all that was needed. That and Apphia Campbell.

I'd seen Black is the Color of my Voice ten years ago and little had changed except Ms. Campbell's voice which now seemed stronger, more powerful than I remembered.

The theme then is the same as it is now, as it was 100 years go - maybe since the beginning of time.  RACISM - the ugliest word in the dictionary.

It's the heart rending story of a thinly disguised Nina Simone's life as singer, pianist and activist for the Civil Rights Movement told emotionally and vocally by the play's multi-award winning sole performer.

She laughs (with irony), she cries (sorrowfully), she sighs (philosophically). Even at the age of three she realises the sense of injustice there is in the world.

I and the rest of the audience were transfixed. To paraphrase the words of one of the songs which Ms. Campbell delivered with so much feeling, she put a spell on the entire room.

Those moments when (most of) the world were shocked and horrified at the assassination of Martin Luther King, the four black schoolchildren killed in the Birmingham, Alabama, school bombing and the other atrocities committed by so-called white supremacists are all woven into the story Mena/Nina shares with her late daddy.

Add her own dysfunctional marriage into the mix and we discover truth can indeed be stranger and more horrific than fiction.

I felt compelled and moved by every word, action and song.

After Feeling Good brought the performance to a close the standing ovation said it all. This was more than a show or a play - it was a social document to stand alongside Show Racism the Red Card and Black Lives Matter.

There's another performance at Northern Stage tonight (7th) followed by: Jersey (9th); Coventry (13th); Cork (15th); Chipping Norton (17th) & Ipswich (18th). An unmissable, thought provoking evening lies in store. Lance

Songs: I Loves You Porgy; Love me or Leave me; I Put a Spell on You; The Look of Love; Don't Ever Go; Wild is the Wind; Let it Shine; We Shall Overcome; Young, Gifted and Black; I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free & Feeling Good.