Song's characters come to life in 'Nina Simone: Four Women' at Milwaukee Repertory Theater

"Nina Simone: Four Women," Milwaukee Repertory Theater's new production, is neither a musical nor a revue. Instead, Christina Ham's play with substantial music dramatizes how Simone made civil rights activism the driving force in her songs following the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

That bombing killed four Black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. Three Klu Klux Klan members were belatedly convicted of their murders.

As Ham's play begins, Simone is trying to write the song that would become "Mississippi Goddam," her protest anthem, when she is interrupted by unexpected visits from Sarah, Sephronia and Sweet Thing — three characters from her song "Four Women."

In the Rep production, Broadway veteran Brittney Mack is Sweet Thing, whom the playwright describes as "enticing whether she wants to be or whether she’s paid to be."

"She is the sexuality of Black women standing flat-footed saying, 'Here I am. And I'm not apologizing for it,'" Mack said when interviewed during a recent rehearsal break.

"She didn't get to own her body and own her sexuality by herself," Mack said. "As a young woman, she was forced into it and pushed into it and felt like there was no return after that."

Feeling like playwright 'is telling all our secrets'

Some commentators have seen Sarah, Sephronia and Sweet Thing, the characters come to life from Simone's song, as archetypal roles Black women have been forced into by racism.

In building her character for this show, Mack has her own role model in mind: "She is the manifestation of Donna Summer's 'Bad Girls.'"

Even as Mack lavished praise on the playwright, she said it can be unnerving performing Ham's play.

"I feel like she is telling all our secrets," Mack said, referring to things Black women talk about, including colorism in the Black community.

In the show, Nina (played by Alexis J. Roston) has "a wonderful train of thought," Mack said, about how the world has never been kind to real Black-looking woman.

"Oh God, I get emotional thinking about it," Mack said.

"Especially as a young Black woman, that's how you're raised, you have to work harder, you have to be better … because you will still be less even when you're the best."

Mack, a Chicago native, was introduced to Simone's music as a little girl by her mom and her granddad (who also turned her on to Fats Waller). What Mack loved most about Simone was how her voice sounded. Like Roberta Flack, Simone sounds like a piano she she sings, Mack said.

"The way Nina's voice vibrates reminds me of how a grand piano vibrates."

Describing herself as a very petite Black woman with a big voice, Mack said "listening to Nina Simone was like the beginning of my permission to be big."

The Rep show, a co-production with Kansas City Repertory Theatre, is directed by Milwaukee native Malkia Stampley.

Finding common ground with a queen

In the Broadway production of the musical "Six," in which a multiracial cast portrayed the wives of Henry VIII, Mack was Anna of Cleves, the fourth wife (her song, for those who know the show, was "Get Down"). A 16th-century white German woman might seem a long way from a 21st-century Black Chicagoan, but Mack found plenty of ways to identify.

By some accounts, Henry never consummated his marriage with Anna because he found her physically unappealing. As a darker-skinned Black woman, that element of the story "was the most challenging (emotionally)," Mack said. For the assertive character she portrayed in "Six," Mack built her performance on the many positives she learned about Anna, including her supportive family and her solid foundation in her identity.

"And she was very beautiful. And she was very cool."

If you go

Milwaukee Repertory Theater performs "Nina Simone: Four Women" from April 16-May 12 at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit milwaukeerep.com or call (414) 224-9490.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 'Four Women' dramatizes how singer Nina Simone became an activist