YOU would not recognise Nina Kristofferson from her last appearance on a North Yorkshire stage.

She was playing the wounded, smouldering, child-murdering Medea in Northern Broadsides’ adaptation of Euripides’s Greek tragedy, Medea, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough in 2010.

Next Thursday, she returns to Yorkshire, this time in Nina Kristofferson’s Billie Holiday Story at the Grand Opera House in York, reprising the role of the troubled American blues singer that indirectly had led to her being cast as Medea.

“The reason Barrie Rutter [Broadsides’ artistic director] was attracted to the idea of me auditioning for the part was all the drama that Billie had gone through herself,” said Nina. “If there is a similarity, it’s in their emotional pain.”

Nina first portrayed Billie Holiday in the one-woman show I Cover The Waterfront – The Spirit Of Billie Holliday and now she is touring with her band in her Billie Holiday Story, with its combination of songs and a life story that takes in rape, drugs, racism and prison.

You could sense her love of Billie in her every utterance, as she looked out over the Grand Opera House auditorium last Friday.

“Her voice draws you in,” she said. “It’s the warmth and the deepness and it speaks to you. When you listen to Billie, every line, every lyric, every phrase, tells a story, and she invests so much into everything she sings. If you have a musical gene in your body, you can’t help but be moved by that voice. She’s timeless too; she’s influenced so many singers through the years, both in her time and in our time with a singer like Any Winehouse.”

Nina will not seek to replicate the Holiday voice. “It’s more interesting to do something with it, rather than just trying to sound like her,” she said. “What I do is use the characteristics of Billie Holiday: the way she turns a phrase; the colour in her voice; that kind of cry she had in her voice; and if you do the music in her key that helps as well.”

NIna first performed her Billy Holiday Story with pianist Warren Wills at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe and is now on tour with musical director Alan Rogers, who is MD for the Strictly Come Dancing tours and has worked with Shirley Bassey.

Keyboard player Rogers is joined by tenor saxophonist Albert Gaza, double bass player Phil Donnelly, trumpet player Professor Martin Shaw and Elliott Henshaw. “I’ve got a world-class band and they really keep me on my toes,” said Nina.

The show takes a journey through Billie Holiday’s life that is as moving as the songs. “If you look at Billie’s songs, they’re all emotional, and it’s a case of setting the tempo in line with the story, so that it has energy and momentum,” said Nina.

Nina Kristofferson’s Billie Holiday Story, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday (April 17), 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 or atgtickets.com/york