Starring the author of the play, Laiona Michelle, this is simply a tour-de-force presentation of Simone come to life. I remember her best sitting at the piano just playing Bach and reaching down into her soul for the music which she played beautifully and more  expressively than I had ever heard it played before, I vividly recall her voice which was so deep and mellow that even happy songs were brought out with sadness and joy mixed together. Her version of "Feeling Good" from "The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd" is the perfect example of that and the song opens the first act of this show. Laiona Michelle takes a quick plunge into the pool of history that makes up the book of this very moving and frankly exhausting show. 

        Michelle is sensational. She has the dark, gravelly tones that signal Simone. She has the stature and strength as well. The first act is set at a concert a few days after Martin Luther King's death in 1968 and the second act is at a performance in Switzerland in 1976. Between the acts time had taken its toll on her as things have progressed. Her life has altered and so has her music. Assisted by three terrific musicians who can also act: Ken Salters, Saadi Zair and, at the piano, Mark Fifer who can play anything. However good these men are, though, Michelle is the show. It is as though she has uploaded Simone, to tell her story and to sing her music and most important to bring us who felt we knew her, and to those too young to have known her, a sense that we have her now for as long as we need her. She died in 2003. She lives again!