Simply Tina
A raw musical triumph
Tina: The Musical Aldwych
Born in the USA, made in England. That’s the thesis of this slickly choreographed, beautifully designed and roof-raisingly well-sung bio-musical about Tina Turner, charting the R&B turned rock goddess’s progress from Nutbush, Tennessee via the school of hardknocks to the top of her profession, after she recorded Private Dancer in London in the early Eighties and in doing so, rebooted her career
Rumoured to have taken an £8 million in advance ticket sales, the evening proves an Anglo-american triumph. It combines the aesthetic finesse of British director Phyllida Lloyd with the political instincts of Memphis-born, Olivier-nominated playwright Katori Hall – and boasts a tour de force performance by the American actress Adrienne Warren.
Seldom offstage and required to execute multiple in-the-blink-of-an-eye costume changes, Warren is entrusted with singing hit after hit. She has to honour those smoky vocals, summoning the kind of heft you’d swear could tip trucks, but she can’t allow any hint of karaoke tribute.
The near-impossible expectation is that she doesn’t just “play” Turner, but somehow “becomes” her. Yet that precisely, magically, is what seems to happen. Legs astride in battle-position, Warren radiates a joy in the act of singing her heart out that’s wholly infectious. As with the Carole King musical Beautiful – previously at this theatre – the empowering trajectory affirms how a talented female artist found the resolve to go it alone, and reaped the benefits.
In this case, the initial helping-hand for the woman born Anna Mae Bullock rapidly became a bruising fist: in the Sixties-set sequences, Ike Turner’s notorious philandering is kept to a minimum but there’s abundant simulated domestic violence. Kobna Holdbrook-smith does what he can to prevent this volatile, possessive musician from being one-note nasty, yet in Hall’s script, Mr T is almost demonised, driving his meek spouse into the near-fatal arms of Valium.
As with the Lloyd-directed mega-hit Mamma Mia!, part of the pleasure lies in anticipating familiar numbers. Some follow the basic career chronology (the breakthrough solo River Deep Mountain High arrives during a Phil Spector-supervised recording session).
But Let’s Stay Together helps foreground the furtive relationship between the fledgling star and the father to her first child, saxophonist Raymond Hill; Private Dancer is ingeniously allied to her post-ike period of penury; and I Can’t Stand the Rain reflects the sodden melancholy of early Eighties London.
The evening is bookended by a 1988 concert in Brazil: our indomitable heroine first prepares to meet her army of fans, casting her mind back to the prayers of her childhood, then does so, rewarding them (and us) with a lungs-bursting rendition of Simply the Best. An obvious yet perfect climax.
Booking until Oct 20. Tickets: 0845 200 7981; tinathemusical.com