The Globe and Mail (Alberta Edition)
Tina offers explosive energy and an epic star
Lead Zurin Villanueva delivers intense raw emotion as the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll
All we see is Tina Turner’s back, silhouetted in the glare. Overwhelmed by visions of her turbulent past, she sinks to her knees and comforts herself with the otherworldly sound of a Buddhist chant. She’s facing away from us toward the literal next stage of a life filled with challenges: a set of stairs ascending to a sea of distant flashbulbs representing 180,000 screaming fans.
Director Phyllida Lloyd’s arresting opening image puts us backstage with Turner (Zurin Villanueva), where we’ll stay for most of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, holding our breath as she takes a courageous step into what’s next. Though its paint-bynumbers book is serviceable at best, fans of Turner’s music won’t be disappointed by the show’s explosive energy, glittering design and an epic leading performance that says I Want To Take You Higher than the material around it.
Jukebox bio-musicals have the tough task of covering decades of a life and career around pre-existing songs, and even Pulitzerwinner Katori Hall along with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins can’t keep the book from feeling like a quick checklist tied together by the effective framing device of Turner’s big moment in concert.
The first act primarily presents Turner’s (née Anna Mae Bullock) victimhood. She witnesses domestic abuse by the hands of both parents: Her cold mother (Roz White) left with her sister (Gigi Lewis) during Turner’s childhood, and her controlling father (Kristopher Stanley Ward) subsequently sent her to live with her grandmother (Shari Washington Rhone).
Then, she experiences that abuse firsthand at the feet of her husband Ike Turner, the man who discovered her, claimed her and even renamed her while keeping a stranglehold on her life and career. The second act marks her struggle and comeback after bravely striking out on her own.
Rapidly flitting from one incident to the next and combining related events without lingering, the script’s furious pace and smooth transitions are admirable but rarely explore its subject in depth. Lingering on the tip of the musical’s tongue but never quite put into words are important things to say about the cycle of abuse and Tina Turner’s courage in breaking it.
The most incisive commentary is via an explanation but not excuse for Ike’s violent behaviour. Played with genuine menace and simmering rage by Deon Releford-Lee, he describes in bone-chilling fashion the lynch mob beating and agonizingly slow death of his father before lamenting his own erasure from music history. When two white policemen shake him down for “motel fees” after the whites-only motel turns the band away, his meek acceptance transmutes into a power play over the person who can least defend against his blows.
Ike’s explosive reactions contrast with Tina Turner’s grim determination and quiet strength; dealing with racism, ageism and sexism to boot, she turns to Buddhism instead of lashing out.
Her songs are well-placed within the narrative. Unless required as part of her career trajectory, they don’t follow a strict chronology, instead inserted where they make the most thematic or emotional sense. For example, when she worries that accepting Ike’s proposal out of loyalty rather than love will trap her in an abusive marriage, she warns him with her 1984 solo hit, Better Be Good to Me.
The songs are most intriguing when turned into conversations or stirring memories of the past. Don’t Turn Around becomes a moving duet between Turner and her grandmother as the latter sends the young woman off to reconnect with her mother, and Open Arms features manager Rhonda (Sarah Bockel), who starts on Ike’s casting couch but becomes a sister figure to her.
The opening, with her preacher father and hometown Nutbush, Tenn., congregation swirling around the singer, has an endearingly surreal quality, echoed in the second act’s I Can’t Stand the Rain, where her ex metaphorically stalks her through a sea of umbrellas. Mostly they’re arranged in a straightforward manner, rather than creatively reimagined.
However, let’s be real: We’re here to see whether Turner blows the roof off the place, and embodied by Villanueva on opening night (Ari Groover in alternate performances), she absolutely does. In a bravura and often astonishing marathon performance, Villanueva captures Turner’s signature vocal inflection without sounding like a parody of the singer. She delivers intense raw emotion and energy, and the speed at which the emotions must change is even more impressive.
Her long legs dazzle in flashy choreography with the hardworking Ikettes, and she sparkles in Mark Thompson’s glorious costumes from Mackie mini to eighties extravaganza, performing quick changes that symbolize transformational moments. With the clever costuming and subtle changes in body language, she believably ages from a coltish 17year-old to a more deliberate woman in her 40s.
While Villanueva’s Turner is a star-making turn, she’s not the only one who makes an impression; Brianna Cameron as young Anna Mae has a strong set of pipes and a sense of infectious joy that lightens any scene she’s in.
That lightness is important because the transcendent beauty of the songs contrasts so sharply with the darkness of the portrayal of domestic abuse that the difference in tone between song and script is sometimes hard to take. The second act injects some much-needed humour with a new young Australian manager and German beau, but also feels a bit jarring after the grim first.
Despite the thinness of the book, there’s no denying the power of Turner’s journey from tragedy to triumph, as in the show’s most potent moment when the future Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll decides to change her life in the middle of Proud Mary. Performing the dynamite number like a woman possessed, Villanueva drops the act in an instant, letting the manic light in her eye die and replacing it with steel.
When the song returns under her full, exultant control in the encore, you’ll be on your feet for an icon. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical runs to July 28