Whoa. Arizona Theatre Company’s “Nina Simone: Four Women” is gorgeous.
The production of the play-with-music to close out the 2022 Tucson Desert Song Festival is a stunner all the way through: Arnel Sancianco designed a vivid, still-smokey set of a bombed-out Birmingham church; Philip S. Rosenberg made the stage electric and alive with his exquisite lighting; Ramona Ward’s costumes helped define each character; and Daniel Perelstein Jaquette’s sound design made real the guns and screams from the streets outside as violence against African Americans continued after four children were killed when the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite at the church in 1963.
This is a fictionalized version of Simone’s awakening to political protest. After that bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, she feverishly wrote “Mississippi Goddamn,” a powerful anthem about the inequities and crimes inflicted on human beings whose skin is black.
Playwright Christina Ham framed the story around archetypes of African American women that Simone wrote about in her song “Four Women.”
“‘Four Women’ came to me after conversations I had with black women,” Simone told LaShonda Katrice Barnett, author of the 2007 book “I Got Thunder: BlackWomen Songwriters on Their Craft.” “It seemed we were all suffering from self-hatred. We hated our complexions, our hair, our bodies. I realized we had been brainwashed into feeling this way about ourselves by some black men and many white people.”
The acting, like the other production values, was superb — even at the preview performance we saw. Previews are basically rehearsals with an audience; mistakes are expected and made and usually corrected by opening night. We saw no mistakes.
Candace Thomas nailed the essence of Simone, who had a crispness and eloquence to her voice and an arrogance to her demeanor. The other women, who were given the names that Simone had in the song, were just as astounding. Deidra Grace was Sarah, a housekeeper who has worked tirelessly for white folks most of her life. And when Grace broke into an a capella version of the old spiritual “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” the audience did not stir.
Kia Dawn Fulton infused her character Sweet Thing, a street walker, with an abundance of attitude, and Katya Collazo brought a well-intentioned earnestness to Sephronia, a civil rights worker who is of mixed-race and often gets harassed because of her lighter skin.
All women, soulfully accompanied by Danté Harrell on piano, sang with power and feeling. And the times they joined together in song were particularly moving. Thomas’ rendition of “Mississippi Goddamned” was fierce in its anger and passion. But the final song, “Four Women,” with a stanza sung by each of them, was the most riveting. It succinctly underscored the individuality and power of each woman.
While the production soared, the script had some problems. The fact that Sweet Thing was carrying a baby fathered by Sephronia’s boyfriend was brought up but never followed up; it was hard to figure out the point. The play lacked a dramatic arc. While Sarah and Simone were well-drawn, the other characters had little nuance. And all of the characters but Simone came off as caricatures — something the song doesn’t do.
Still, this production, smoothly directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, will keep you nailed to your seat and give one a renewed appreciation for the powerful Nina Simone. It really is, well, gorgeous.
