She’s got all the right moves for turning into Tina
A DrIEnnE Warren stood in front of the microphone. Something about the way she moved her feet was familiar. Then she started singing the Diane Warren/Albert Hammond song Don’t Turn Around.
‘If you want to leave,’ she sang, ‘I won’t beg you to stay.’
It was uncanny. The Virginia-born Ms Warren was becoming Tina Turner before my eyes — and giving a masterclass in heartbreak.
Warren, who was nominated for a Tony award for her role in the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, portrays Turner in the musical Tina, which begins previewing at the Aldwych Theatre on March 21.
Standing close to her, strumming a guitar, was Kobna HoldbrookSmith — leaner, slimmer and fitter than I’ve seen him — as Ike Turner. He told me he’d shed more than a stone to play the man who beat and abused Tina.
As Warren continued singing, the Ikettes ( played by Candace Furbert, Sia Kiwa and Tsemaye Bob-Egbe) moved stage left in a deft choreographic step devised by Anthony van Laast.
I crossed my fingers, praying director Phyllida Lloyd would ask them to rehearse the number again.
She did — and it was electrifying. The whole cool vibe in the rehearsal hall in north London reminded me of watching shows being put together at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
I looked around the room and noticed that designer Mark Thompson had placed photographs of Tina (solo, or paired with Ike) here and there. Producer Tali Pelman told me Turner had visited during casting last year; and again for some rehearsals: ‘ She’s very present — even when she’s not here.’
Pelman, an executive with Stage Entertainment, met with the singer several years ago with a view to making a musical based on her upbringing in nutbush, Tennessee and the hard years with Ike before she broke free and launched her solo career.
Adrienne Warren met Turner, too, to help her take on what she termed ‘ the beautiful challenge’ of portraying the icon. ‘ We’re the same height, but we have different builds,’ she said. ‘But it’s not about trying to look exactly like her. It’s the essence of her I want to capture. I’ve watched her work with all of us; and she does make you feel you can achieve anything. ‘She told me: “Just give your all.” She said she never drinks water on stage, and she doesn’t wipe her sweat. She just lets it roll down her.’ Warren said it was interesting how many women were involved in the project: from director Lloyd to producer Pelman to writer Katori Hall. Lloyd, who directed the phenomenal Mamma Mia! 17 years ago, often gets asked if Tina’s a jukebox musical. It’s not — but the songs do tell a story. She said even Tina was surprised when she realised she had ‘gravitated to songs that tell the story of her life’. numbers like Don’t Turn Around and Better Be Good To Me.
But important as the songs are, getting the story of Tina’s life right was vital.
‘It’s music drama; and it’s savage and funny,’ Lloyd said, explaining that whenever they came to ‘a fork in the road that perhaps called for a musical theatre moment, everybody said: go the other way. Take the brave choice, keep the stakes high, and don’t lighten it.’
The director called Tina a tale of a woman on an epic journey who emerges ‘in a state of grave grace’.
‘You’d have thought that, after all the abuse, when it came to running her own career she’d have been tough. People often carry the abuse they’ve got and inflict it on others around them. But not her.’
Though Tina was tough on the dance steps. Van Laast recalled how she ‘ spent half an hour working on one step, until we got it right’.