Theatre: Tina Turner the Musical @ Bord Gáis Energy Theatre

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre
Grand Canal Square, Docklands, Dublin 2
bordgaisenergytheatre.ie

A friend of mine has an excellent story where he was in a bar with a friend catching up when Proud Mary came on the sound system. Their friend, somehow, had never had the experience of seeing the Ike and Tina Turner version of the song play in a public setting before so when the entire bar lost their shit in tandem to the explosive “rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ in the river line”, complete with the full body jerk, they thought that they had fallen into a fever dream.

Last night at the second night of Tina Turner the Musical in the Bord Gáis Theatre was a bit like that. Having never seen Tina live but adoring her for most of my life, Karis Anderson’s version (she alternates shows with 2002 Pop Idol winner Zoe Birkett) was the closest that I and a theatre full of rabid fans ever will.

Tina’s life story is familiar to anyone who has seen What’s Love Got to do With It, the 1993 biopic starring Angela Bassett, and while the first half sticks close to the struggles she facade growing up and the abuse she suffered at the hands of Ike, the second act allows for a little more humour to ease its way into the story.

Written by Olivier Award and Pulitzer Prize playwright Katori Hall and directed by Mamma Mia’s Phyllida Lloyd, the musical was developed with Tina’s approval in 2016, so all the music in it is hers, either with Ike, solo or one of the many covers that have become distinctively hers. The crowd went wild to every song, and they really deserve some attention in this review.