By Mike Hoban
‘Nina Simone: Four Women’ – Written by Christina Ham. Directed by Kenneth L. Roberson; Christopher Rhoton, Scenic Designer; Michael Alan Stein, Costume Designer; Lee Fiskness, Lighting Designer; Lighting Designer Merrimack Repertory Theatre at the Nancy L. Donahue Theatre through March 8
If you’re anticipating a fawning musical love letter to jazz great and civil rights activist Nina Simone from MRT’s entertaining Nina Simone: Four Women, prepare to be surprised. Christina Ham’s 2016 play-with-music is no feel-good biopic of the “High Priestess of Soul”. Instead, Ham takes the gloves off, depicting Simone as narcissistic and as classist as any old-money white guy before she undergoes a spiritual transformation late in the play. Part fictionalized history lesson and part jukebox musical, Four Women showcases some of Simone’s most popular works (as well as some solid originals), but also highlights the struggles and widely varying experiences of three African-American women that she encounters following a brutal murder that rocked the country.
The play opens with Simone under a spotlight singing one of her signature tunes, Gershwin’s “I Loves You, Porgy” – presumably in an upscale jazz club – when a bone-jarring explosion rocks the theater. We’re then transported to the bombed out remains of the Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church, where on September 15, 1963, four young girls perished when a bomb was detonated during Sunday morning services, courtesy of the KKK. The horrific act was in response to a federal court order to integrate Alabama’s school system and helped draw national attention to the civil rights movement. The death of the four girls – Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins – aged 11-14, marked the beginning of the Simone’s true awakening, as she goes from “outsider in a Cadillac chariot” to an influential voice in the civil rights movement.
Following the bombing, Simone is working on a protest song, “Mississippi Goddam”, in the rubble of the church. In walks Sarah (played with a genuine and painful vulnerability by Deanna Reed-Foster), a housekeeper/nanny for a white family who’s also a member of the church. Sarah is deeply pained, having known the young girls, but fears becoming active in the civil rights movement because it may impact her ability to earn a living and survive. Philosophically, Sarah is a follower of MLK, while Simone embraces the style of the more radical Malcolm X, who believes that change is coming “too slow”. When Simone tells Sarah that she and all “negroes” should just walk off her job in protest, Sarah responds, “Only people dressed in fancy clothes can talk like that.”
That’s just one example of the giant class divide between Sarah and Simone, who defines herself as a “black classical” artist, clearly existing in a different stratosphere than the lowly housekeeper. But Sarah is not without her own prejudice, as we see when Sephronia (Ariel Richardson), a young, light-skinned black woman who’s active in the movement, shows up at the church. Sarah and Simone immediately begin to demean Sephronia, calling her a “high yellah” with the implication that her light skin (her father was white) somehow makes her less “black” than them. And all three of them find someone lower in the pecking order to turn on when booze-swilling prostitute Sweet Thing (Alanna Lovely) shows up, until they all break down, begin listening to each other’s pain and begin to lean on each other.
While the characterizations are interesting and shine a light on the archetypes of black women that still exist today, the exchanges do little to advance the narrative in any meaningful way. Luckily, we’ve got Simone’s catalog to listen to throughout, and the talented cast delivers on numbers like “Mississippi Goddam,” “Old Jim Crow,” “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and “To be Young, Gifted and Black,” as well as Ham’s original composition, “Shout, Oh Mary!” As Simone, Dionne Addai has big shoes to fill vocally as the legendary songstress. She isn’t always compelling with her solo work, but she and the outstanding cast really excel during the ensemble numbers, particularly “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Addai’s glamorous characterization of Simone is also a bit over the top, making her seem more like a Diana Ross-style diva than the jazz legend, although she really hits her stride late in the play, when she finally sheds the haughty veneer and becomes the woman she was meant to be. Reed-Foster is a vocal powerhouse in addition to her layered performance as Sarah, and Richardson and Lovely are also gifted performers.
MRT has imported nearly all of the show’s talent from Chicago, including director Kenneth L. Roberson, Reed-Foster, Richardson, piano player Daniel Riley, and the entire creative team (lighting, costumes, sound and scenic design) from a production at Northlight Theatre in Skokie last winter. The set by Christopher Rhoton is alternately awe-inspiring and deeply disturbing, especially when one remembers the human and psychological toll that was inflicted on the Birmingham community at the church.
Like most jukebox musicals, it’s not the plot that matters, and the rousing and deeply emotional numbers more than make up for any flaws. You’ve got one more weekend to catch this show, and it’s worth the trip to Lowell and the intimate setting of the Nancy L. Donahue Theatre. For tickets and information, go to: http://mrt.org/show/nina-simone-four-women
