‘Tina: The Tina Turner Musical’ Review: Comeback Queen
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical (★★★☆☆), which just shimmied into the National Theatre, three stops into a 30-city national tour.But the show’s creators, including book writer Katori Hall, a Pulitzer winner for her drama The Hot Wing King, don’t seem to have been too sure what to do with Turner’s cache of classics, succeeding only half the time at persuasively reimagining the songs within the context of the singer’s tumultuous life story.You know the story, told via Turner’s multiple memoirs, plus the beloved 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It and the stellar 2021 documentary Tina, not to mention semi-autobiographical songs like “Nutbush City Limits.”Tina the musical turns “Nutbush City Limits” into a rousing spiritual, dominated by the gospel wail of Ann Nesby portraying Tina’s Gran Georgeanna. One of the savvier uses of Turner’s catalog, the number introduces young Anna-Mae Bullock (a delightful Ayvah Johnson), a little girl with a big voice, from a broken home in rural Tennessee.In another crafty use of an early hit, teenage Anna-Mae, played on press night by the equally big-voiced Naomi Rodgers (the role is played on select nights by Zurin Villanueva), is introduced by sister Alline (Parris Lewis) to the faster scene in St.