Jayna Elise in Tina Turner: The Tina Turner Musical, Broadway Across Canada Touring. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
By Liz Nicholls,
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, now on the Jube stage in a Broadway Across Canada touring production, is framed by two images of the star, the famous lion mane in silhouette, from the back.
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The opener has her, in red leather mini-dress, at the base of a golden staircase, meditating, to a Buddhist chant. Her hard-ass childhood emerges from her memory and materializes on the stage. The finale has her, in that signature dress, mounting the golden staircase in triumph, to the dazzling light of 180,000 fans at a record-breaking concert in Rio.
In between is a remarkable story — much more dramatic than your average jukebox musical — that’s tumultuous in both its biographical narrative and its showbiz glamour and grit. And at the centre of both, in this touring version of Phyllida Lloyd’s original 2018 production, is a sensational performance from Jayna Elise as the genre-busting queen of rock n’ roll.
Not only does Elise have the powerhouse voice and the exuberant signature physicality of Turner (choreography: Anthony Van Laast), to deliver the songs you love (River Deep-Mountain High, Simply The Best, Private Dancer, Proud Mary, What’s Love Got To Do With It…) in a thrilling way, she is actually believable in the timespan of the bio-jukebox musical, from the teenage Turner to the comeback superstar in her 40s. And without a charismatic, energizing performance on this scale — Elise is almost never off the stage in two-and-a-half hours — a Tina Turner musical just wouldn’t take root. Even as a jukebox of mega-hits, much less a vivid backstage-onstage bio-story of courage and persistence against the odds, written only sketchily by the playwright Katori Hall (The Mountaintop) with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins.
Act I charts Turner’s humble origins as Anna-Mae Bullock in the cotton patch town of Nutbush, Tenn.. She’s a neglected kid from an abusive family, with an unfeeling mother and a preacher father who slaps his wife around. The young Anna-Mae, played by a young actor with a startlingly big voice, Taylor Brice, is forever being warned by her ma (ably played on opening night by understudy Aniah Long) before she walks out, not to sing so loud in church. So much for maternal advice in life. The rejoinder, in effect, is Turner’s Nutbush City Limits.
Jayce Elise as Tina Turner in Tina Turna: The Tina Turner Musical, Broadway Across Canada Touring. Photo by Julieta Cervantes
When she moves north to St. Louis, on the advice of her grandmother (Deirdre Lang), Anna-Mae gets “discovered,” on a night out on the town with her sister. She’s plucked out of the audience by band leader/businessman Ike Turner (a dangerously kinetic performance by Sterling Baker-McClary), a philandering bully, abuser, and sexist pig who knows a star voice when he hears it. He takes her over, changes her name to Tina Turner to go with his, and the touring Ike and Tina Turner Revue is born. At 18, her career is launched, by a brutal man and against a backdrop in the South where the band gets turned away from white motels and has to pay the motel fee anyway.
Bruno Poet’s lighting, smoky, slatted visions of the American underbelly, with mist rising off the Mississippi, is a gorgeous evocation of time and place. And lighting has a dramatic role to play in a story of a journey from dark into (very bright) light.
Sterling Baker-McClary as Ike Turner in Tina Turner: The Tina Turner Musical, Broadway Across Canada Touring. Photo by Julieta Cervantes
The sexy dance routines, with the Ikettes, in I Want To Take You Higher and River Deep-Mountain High (produced by Phil Spector, played by Bear Manescalchi) are a knock-out, enhanced by Mark Thompson’s glittering costumes, which seem to have a life of their own. And Jeff Sugg’s hypnotic psychedelic projection-scape runs to creating whole backdrops of undulating sound waves and kaleidoscopes spiralling into colour caverns behind spinning eyeballs. As domestic brutality escalates, even the Ikettes think Turner should leave Ike. And by intermission, and a lot of bruises and hospital visits to go with rising stardom, Turner has finally had enough. Which makes Proud Mary an anthem of resistance, and I Don’t Want to Fight No More something equally visceral.
Act II has obstacles of another kind: in addition to poverty and white racism, there’s ageism, and in cross-Atlantic encounters, preposterous accents. Turner the divorced single mother is reduced to Vegas bar shows to pay the rent. And she persists. But the avenging fury of Ike pursues and haunts her, even in a trip to London to record. There’s a beautiful scene of London in the rain, evoked by umbrellas, and street reflections conjured by projections. But the dramatic scenes with record producers and execs — Aussie producer Roger Davies (Joe Hornberger) and the gentle German Erwin Bach (Steven Sawan) — though, are pretty thin and unconvincing. And the dialogue, which runs to “well, what do you want to sing?” or “we want to bring it into the Now…” in recording studios, borrowed from the off-the-rack musical biography outlet, seems perfunctory and threadbare.
There’s high-tech sophistication in the lighting and the visual effects in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. And there’s the leading lady herself, in Elise’s explosive performance, who turns skimpy moments into songs, and takes charge of her own career, an unequalled “comeback” that translates into super-stardom. You’ll cheer for her and for her uncontainable joie de vivre in performing. And the encores will have you on your feet and dancing. It’s that kind of show.
REVIEW
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical
Broadway Across Canada Touring
Directed originally by : Phyllida Lloyd
Choreographed by: Anthony Van Laast
Starring: Jayna Elise, Sterling Baker-McClary, Elaina Walton, Meghan Dawnson, Deidre Lang, Taylor Brice
Where: Jubilee Auditorium
Running: through Sunday
Tickets: ticketmaster.ca, https://edmonton.broadway.com/shows/tina/
