There comes a moment late in the first act of “TINA: The Tina Turner Musical” when the brutalized star of the title has swallowed valium in a failed suicide attempt and lies in a hospital bed. Her mother, Zelma, is at her bedside, telling her that Ike has sent a limo to the hospital; she’s got a show to do.
“Go on out there and give them people what they been waiting on,” says Zelma.
Cue the languorous guitar intro to “Proud Mary.” Tina Turner’s version of the song to this day — and likely forever — elicits a Pavlovian joy as Turner and backup dancers (first the Ikettes and later her own troupe) begin that slow slide from “nice and easy” to “nice and rough.”
Nominated for 12 Tonys in 2020, the glitzy biographical musical’s tour brings the trials and triumphs of the rock ‘n’ roll icon to Denver’s Buell Theatre through Oct. 29.
“Tina” starts with the icon (played by Ari Groover on opening night, growling and strutting) sitting on the stage, her back to the audience. Wearing a spiky blonde wig and tight skirt, she begins chanting the Buddhist mantra “nam-myoho-renge-kyo.” She’s backstage at the 1988 concert in Brazil, where nearly 200,000 people gathered to hear her.
Meeting the rhythm of the chant, her grandmother, Gran Georgeanna (Wydetta Carter), arrives on stage with her own chant, one evocative of the ancestors. Then comes a slow thumping beat and finally, the cadences of the Black church as the show segues into Anna Mae Bullock’s beginnings in Nutbush, Tenn.
Those varied rhythms shaped Anna Mae. Years before that concert, when she made her break from husband Ike Turner, the singer would keep the name he christened her with when they launched the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
At the age of 17, Anna Mae Bullock travels from Nutbush to St. Louis, where she reunites with her formidable and hardly nurturing mother (played by Roz White) and sister Alline (Gigi Lewis). At a juke joint, she meets and impresses Ike (Deon Releford-Lee, bringing the brutal edge if not the charisma of Ike). The popular guitarist and band leader has watched the musicians he’s nurtured go on to better things, and he’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen with Anna Mae. The King of Rhythm has found his queen.
But when he hurls a cymbal at her in anger, it’s clear he isn’t going to treat her right. He’ll bully and then beat her for the next 16 years.
Through the Buell’s run, Tina Turner will be portrayed alternately by Groover and Parris Lewis. If you’ve read about the physical demands that the show exerted on Tony winner Adrienne Warren, the shared duties are more than sensible.
When recording impresario Phil Spector (Eric Siegle) meets Turner in his Wall of Sound studios for “River Deep, Mountain High” (1966), he tells her, “They’re calling you James Brown in a skirt.” With uncharacteristic confidence, given Ike’s simmering presence nearby, she quips “Or do they call him Tina Turner in pants?”
Yes, Turner in her early years with Ike and then during her solo career was known as one of the hardest-working performers in showbiz. Groover captures that commitment even if the book (by Katori Hall. with Kees Prins and Frank Ketelaar) doesn’t entirely get to the heart of Turner’s drive.
It was Spector who inducted Ike and Tina into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. During that first meeting, Spector playfully points his finger and fires it like a gun. That little gesture feels like the show’s dark wink to Spector’s conviction for killing. Indeed, male violence threads throughout the show. And fans of the 1993 Angela Bassett-Laurence Fishburne movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It” might marvel at the difference between onscreen brutality and onstage assault.
“Tina” is rightly flashy. Projections by Jeff Sugg capture the South of her childhood; the psychedelic pop graphics speak of the 1960s and ’70s, even the view from a St. Louis hospital room. The costumes are fiercely fun, from the plum-colored velveteen jumpsuit Tina dons for “River Deep, Mountain High,” to the fringed miniskirts she and the Ikettes wear so well, and the sleek suits that Ike and Spector sport. The ruffled cuffs the latter wears beneath a gray suit when he meets Tina are an especially nice touch on the part of costume designer Mark Thompson (who also designed the set).
The show is also flawed, but in intriguing ways. Jukebox musicals typically chart the music chronologically. Here, Turner and the show’s creators have tried something different. Hits are woven through the biography. A tune from the 1980s might well show up in a scene from Tina’s earlier life. The effect is inventive, but mixed.
At times the songs feel wedged into the emotional arch they’re trying to convey. (“We Don’t Need Another Hero,” sung by Tina and Alline after their mother passes is something of a headscratcher.) Tina sings “Better Be Good to Me” (a 1984 single from the “Private Dancer” album; she left him in 1976) as a retort to Ike and his abuse.
A few scenes later, she’ll make her escape across a busy interstate and into a roadside hotel. “I Don’t Want to Fight,” which ends the first act, was recorded in 1993. She escaped to that hotel in 1976. Yet the scene of Tina holding keys to the hotel room and her freedom is one of the show’s most emotionally triumphal moments.
Turner’s professional ascendancy will take longer. Act II finds her struggling in Los Angeles with her two sons and little money. Her manager, Rhonda Graam (Sarah Bockel), who stuck with Tina after the Ike dissolution, books her in Las Vegas — or, as Turner tells Columbia Record A&R exec John Carpenter and artists manager Roger Davies, the “singer’s graveyard.’”
Meeting Davies will change both their fortunes. Davies brings Turner to Abbey Road studios to record a song called “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” Initially, the synth-pop sounds don’t call to Turner, who wanders the dreary and wet streets of London. She’s far from sons Craig (Wildlin Pierrevil) and the increasingly sullen Ronnie (Antonio Beverly), haunted by Ike and disappointed in the way the sessions are going, and sings “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”
The Buell itself seems built more for ballads than rock. Even well conducted by music director Anne Shuttlesworth, the more jamming numbers often sounded muddy. The ballads fare better. When Gran Georgeanna nudges Anna Mae to go to St. Louis, she resists (“Don’t Turn Around’). Before Ike lays utter claim to his star, Anna Mae and bandmate Raymond (Gerard M. Williams) had a nice romantic rapport (Craig is their son). Their duet of “Let’s Stay Together” allows the audience to enjoy the moment as oh-so-pretty — even though knowing what’s to come reminds us that the loveliness is doomed.
If Act One is dedicated to the darkness that Tina Turner survived, the show’s second act is a valentine to Turner’s second husband, Erwin Bach (Max Falls). She meets the German marketing exec when he picks her up at the airport in London.
Toward the end of “Tina,” the show and its star and ensemble take to heart Zelma’s hospital room command. The show gives the audience what it’s seemingly come for: Tina in concert. There’s even the kind of encore fans beg for at the end of a killer concert. In other words, stick around until the very end; you’ll be amply rewarded.
IF YOU GO
“TINA: The Tina Turner Musical”: Book by Katori Hall (with Kees Prins and Frank Ketelaar). Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Choreography by Anthony Van Laast. Featuring Ari Groover, Parris Lewis, Deon Releford-Lee, Wydetta Carter, Roz White, Sarah Bockel, Daelyanna Kelly Benson, Antonio Beverly, Max Falls, Symphony King, Aliyah Caldwell, Kendall Leshanti, and Takia Hopson. At the Buell Theater, 14th and Curtis streets. Through Oct. 29. For tickets and info: denvercenter.org or 303.893.4100
