Amber Iman At 92NY

Amber Iman
92NY
Rebel With A Cause: The Artistry and Activism of Nina Simone
New York City
December 9, 2024

Nina Simone blazed a trail as an often-political jazz singer at a time when women entertainers—especially Black ones—were discouraged from highlighting racial injustice and other unpleasant truths in their work. And like almost every Black performer of the era, Simone was repeatedly defrauded and misunderstood, often by white impresarios.

But surely Simone's travails in the '60s and beyond have made things a lot easier for women who have followed in her wake?

Maybe not. That was a key message of Rebel With A Cause: The Artistry and Activism of Nina Simone, a tribute that was presented for three nights in December under the auspices of Lyrics and Lyricists series at 92NY (92nd Street Y).

The show's Black star, the talented Amber Iman, is a successful performer. She earned strong reviews in two Broadway shows—Soul Doctor, in which she played Simone (earning a Clive Barnes Award nomination) and Lempicka, in which she played the girlfriend of the white woman artist for which the show is named, receiving a Tony nomination for the performance.

Yet acclaim does not necessarily bring security. Iman's note in the show's program bravely reveals she wrote the remarks while on a plane to Mexico for "a cruise ship gig...because the rent won't pay for itself." In a touching moment of Rebel Without a Cause ..., she recounts the emotional whiplash of being on top of the world on a Tuesday, when her Tony nod was announced, and out of work two days later, when the closing announcement for Lempicka left "me unemployed."

The weaving together of Simone's struggles and Iman's, however different in degree, was the most interesting aspect of Rebel With A Cause... In the monologues that introduced the songs, the show's writer Jocelyn Bioh—herself a Tony nominee for writing the Broadway play Jaja's African Hair Braiding—built a thematic bridge between the introverted piano-playing Simone and the brassy self-confident Iman.

If it was hard work for Simone to carve her path generations ago, Rebel With A Cause.. suggests, that journey is still no easy stroll for Black women performers today. In a cringeworthy anecdote, Iman describes a request from the white producers of "Soul Doctor," seeing that Black support for the show was weak, that she head uptown to the Abyssinian Baptist Church to sing some spirituals there, as though services at the revered Harlem institution are open-mic events.

Rebel With A Cause... was less successful in building a musical connection between Simone and Iman. The star of a tribute presentation need not display a jukebox-like mimicry of the artist's style, especially when the production is more cabaret than full-blown theater, as was the case for this production. But a tribute should evoke the artistic essence of the honoree more than this show did.

Iman spent too little of the 100-minute run time evoking pain or anger—both among Simone's calling cards. And where many of Simone's signature recordings were intimate affairs, musical director Michael O. Mitchell assembled a brassy nine-piece band (including two somewhat extraneous backing singers) that exuberantly stoked the crowd more than made them reflect.

All this said, Rebel Without A Cause... was not without musical highlights, including the tenderly evocative "Blue is The Color of My True Love's Hair" Iman sang early in the evening. And credit is due for presenting a show that was unafraid to spotlight "Black-ass truth"—as Iman, in her onstage thanks to Reggie D. White, its director, accurately characterized Rebel Without A Cause... as doing.

If even a few people in the near-full house at 92Y came away from the show learning more about a groundbreaking singer and pianist they had barely heard of, that is a kind of success unto itself, one that bodes well for future feisty Nina Simones—and Amber Imans.

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