Theatre / Reviews
Review: Black is the Color of My Voice, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Spectacular, heartbreaking, and ultimately, healing’
A suitcase, a metal bedstead, and a basin of water. That is all Apphia Campbell needs to summon the towering, turbulent spirit of Nina Simone.
Currently playing at Bristol Old Vic as part of its 2026 UK tour, Black Is the Color of My Voice is a masterclass in minimalist storytelling that doesn’t rely on flashy staging or historical hand-waving.
Instead, it drops us directly into a sparse room in 1970s Liberia, where a singer named Mena, a thinly veiled surrogate for Simone, has locked herself away for a three-day ‘cleansing’ ritual following her father’s death.
is needed now More than ever
What follows isn’t a dry, chronological biography. It is a musical exorcism that leaves the packed auditorium entirely under the spell of Simone’s undying legacy.
As Mena speaks to the spirit of her late father, Campbell unspools a life defined by a relentless struggle for agency.
Wrapped in the heavy memory of her father’s expectations and the sting of his absence, she parses the trunk of her life, pulling out fragments of a fractured identity.
We watch her evolution from a young classical piano prodigy whose dreams of playing Bach were crushed by institutional racism, to a reluctant jazz vocalist playing smoke-filled bars, and finally, to a fierce, radical voice of the Civil Rights Movement.
The subtext of the play is where the real weight lies. It highlights the exhausting duality of an artist whose genius was treated as a commodity.
Her classical training was a search for safety; and when that safety was denied, her music had to become a weapon.
Campbell doesn’t play Mena as a saint or a tragic caricature, but rather as a brilliant, deeply fatigued woman sorting through the wreckage of a world that wanted her voice but refused to see her humanity.
When she sings, the production shifts into something transcendent. Anyone attempting to sing Simone’s catalogue faces an uphill battle, but Campbell doesn’t fall into the trap of cheap impersonation. She channels the emotionally powerful marrow of the music.
Performing iconic anthems like We Shall Overcome and Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair, her voice strikes the perfect balance of raw vulnerability and rhythmic maturity.
The musical numbers aren’t just interludes; they are tectonic shifts in Mena’s emotional landscape, punctuated by moments of painful realisation regarding systemic racism and structural negligence.
Clocking in at a tight, uninterrupted 70 minutes, the pacing is flawless. Campbell commands the stage with absolute authority, effortlessly balancing the quiet internal conflict of a grieving daughter with the fiery, revolutionary spirit of an icon who famously declared that an artist’s duty is to reflect the times.
By the time the final notes echoed through the theatre, the opening night audience was instantly brought to its feet for a prolonged, deeply deserved standing ovation.
Black Is the Color of My Voice is a spectacular, heartbreaking, and ultimately healing piece of theatre that lingers in the chest long after you step back out onto King Street.
Black is the Color of My Voice is at Bristol Old Vic on July 15-18 at 7.30pm, with an additional 2.30pm matinee show on Saturday. Visit bristololdvic.org.uk for tickets.
All photos: Geraint Lewis
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