I’ve seen them all, and this jukebox musical is simply the best

MUSICAL THEATRE
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical
Princess Theatre, until January 26
★★★★★

Long has Melbourne eyed Sydney with envy, long have we held our collective breath for the opening of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. It’s been more than worth the wait.

I’ve seen them all, and this is simply the best jukebox musical as rock biography – more inspired and perfectly pitched a triumph even than Jersey Boys (which ignited a global enthusiasm for the genre when it took Broadway by storm in 2005), or indeed any of the musicals that followed in its wake.

Ruva Ngwenya is staggeringly good as Tina Turner, with Giovanni Adams as Ike Turner.Credit: Daniel Boud

No one in rock’n’roll history can touch Tina Turner for career comebacks. Hers is the greatest, and the musical of her life offers much more than her most famous transformation – from a fading soul singer staring down financial ruin as she fled domestic abuse, to the wild-haired rock goddess who put the world at her feet in the 1980s and beyond.

From her early childhood in Tennessee, it’s obvious young Anna Mae Bullock (Zoe Desmier, on opening night) has a voice destined to become legend. She whirls like a little tornado from the pews of the gospel choir, lifting all who hear her into a rendition of Nutbush City Limits, while annoying her mother Zelma (Ibinabo Jack) – a fractious woman who herself fled domestic violence and never wanted a second child.

Ruva Ngwenya’s staggering performance begins with a fully grown Anna Mae abandoned to the care of her grandmother (Deni Gordon), followed by a reunion in St Louis with her mother and sister (Jayme-Lee Hanekom) and an introduction to Ike Turner (Giovanni Adams), who recognises Anna Mae’s talent at once and paves the way to stardom.

Ruva Ngwenya and the Ikettes perform in the Australian production.Credit:

So begins a musical marriage twinning onstage fame and offstage infamy. Sickening brutality attends the portrayal of domestic violence in Tina, which rides waves of crisis and appeasement with an unflinching psychological realism that’s rare in musical theatre.

Appalling flashes of the violent racism of the Deep South contextualise the damage done. Yet Ike’s drug addiction, paranoia, coercive control and savage assaults on Tina are so relentlessly grim that (a bit troublingly) the opening-night crowd cheered when she finally snapped, bashing the shit out of him right back.

We reach interval with the desolating image of Tina bloodied and desperate and alone. Only a voice and stage presence as extraordinary as Ngwenya’s could work the miracle of the second half, which gives us an inside eye on Tina Turner’s resurgent solo career and leaves the audience on its feet, as ecstatic as if they were at one of the legend’s live concerts.

No mere impersonation could do the job. Ngwenya is radiant in her power, with a voice that can take soul-singing to the heavens or carve through the hell of adversity like a chainsaw on fire. It’s an onstage resurrection that must be seen – and heard – to be believed.

The show sports production values as stellar as the performances. Lightning set and costume changes put us aboard a Tardis, time-travelling through decades of musical history and fashion, and the swiftness and expositional clarity of the storytelling, together with well-chosen songs pressed into dramatic service, make Tina’s story a genuinely thrilling rollercoaster ride.

Perhaps the only disappointment is that the Princess Theatre doesn’t allow enough space to break into an impromptu Nutbush dance at encore. It’s as reliable a bastion of Australian egalitarianism as there is, and it wouldn’t surprise me if audiences, elated by the show, start their own as they spill out onto the street during the Melbourne season.

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