First staged in 2018, this show, as Tina Turner herself insisted, is primarily a dramatisation of her life story from impoverished, troubled childhood, through arduous obstacle courses of sexism, racism, abuse and adult pain, and on, only eventually, to global superstardom. There’s music all the way, of course, which grows massively big and mighty in a wow factor finale that explodes with much anticipated, spectacular splendour and excitement.
The first act (somewhat protracted) begins a slow-burn build towards a more intensely engaging second act as the superstar becomes a child again (courtesy of one of three alternating little singer-actors) and we witness the early family life of Anna Mae Bullock. ‘What’s love got to do, got to do with it?’ we might ask. As with us all, love has a great deal to do with everything, especially in a show all about Tina’s relationships – with parents, grandma, siblings, friends, partners, managers, promoters and racial bigots. Her cold-fish mother (Letitia Hector) rejects and criticises her, her controlling father (Rushand Chambers) hits her mother while the abuse she later suffers at the hands of husband, Ike Turner, easily tops all that. Warmer souls, though, are sister Alline (Georgia Gillam), devoted grandma (Claude East) and friend and colleague Rhonda (Gemma Sutton). All characters gain sturdy believability, David King-Yombo earning boos at the end for being convincingly horrible even though all the slapping and violence are deliberately stylised rather than looking realistic. Audible gasps hit the auditorium when racial language, all used as a matter of course for long decades, disturbs the modern ear.
Props, set and wonderful arrays of costumes are kept appropriately simple most of the time, unless for stage shows, and nicely in tune with the eras depicted so that when the full-on audio-visual feast of the finale arrives its impact is the greater. Until then, impressionistic backdrops of swirly, blurry, out-of-focus projections keep the main focus always on the characters as we travel in a flow of scenes from gospel church, humble home and Tennessee cotton fields to rock ‘n’ roll stages, recording studios, hotel, airport, a London full of umbrellas, hospital or stadium, taking in Cherokee and Buddhist chants and a few drugs en route. Music, of course, is there, too, often used as a narrative device in solos, duets or ensemble arrangements or in replicating gigs and sessions. Busy dancer-singers are ever at the ready, occasionally dancing and cavorting with instruments they pretend to play while some actual players appear onstage for the gigs. The stalwart band of real, talented decibel-pounding musicians, though, remains largely unseen until the final flourish reveals them in their full, resplendent glory.
With her iconic, full-on explosions of mighty-voiced, bouncy, bendy-legged, charismatic energy, Tina Turner was a unique audio-visual phenomenon over long decades. It’s up to Elle Ma-Kinga N’Zuzi (alternating performances with Jochebel Ohene MacCarthy) to bring the wild exuberance of those manic moves and that musical mayhem to the stage. As she does, lighting and volume go bonkers – as does the delighted audience. Having put in a gripping dramatic performance as the distressed, bewildered daughter and the cowed and beaten wife who went on to learn how to fight back to overcome prejudice, malice, obstruction and injustice, in spite of her smaller frame, when it comes to that big finale Elle’s got it all – unkempt wig, voice full of power, rasp and welly, and muscular legs set akimbo to stagger, flick and shimmy up and down stairways and across the stage, setting every one of the thousands of shimmering fringes that adorn her tiny dress a-quiver. The journey from Nutbush, Tennessee to top of the world has been emotionally gruelling for all, but now everybody’s up for rollin’ on the river with Proud Mary and giving full throttle to proclaiming to all and sundry that, ‘You’re Simply The Best’.
And that’s her story in a Nutbush nutshell.
Eileen Caiger Gray
