Nina Simone: Four Women by Christina Ham

I was intrigued to read this show since I found the interludes of Nina Simone music to be the best part of Sunset Baby. However, there is, for a start, too much script (no one comes to a show about a specific musician for anything but the music). The purple prose of the character descriptions strongly suggest that this writer would prefer to be writing something other than a play. The script bounces back and forth between being spiritually and philosophically amorphous (lots of high-minded talk without a clear subject) and being primitively pedantic (“Hello, yellow stranger. You must think you are so much better than we are because you are lighter skinned.” “It's not fair that I cannot belong with white folks or black folks.”) I was also disappointed by the selection of songs. The focus of the show is obviously on Nina Simone's more political work, but with more messaged than musical songs, the show is not the enjoyable musical experience that it could be.