Theatre reviews: Tina - The Tina Turner Musical | Gravity

Tina - The Tina Turner Musical, Playhouse, Edinburgh ★★★★

Gravity, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★

The life of Tina Turner is one of the truly epic entertainment world stories of the 20th century. From little unloved black kid growing up in Nutbush, Tennessee, through nightclub singer working three jobs to feed her kids after she fled her violent marriage, to global rock goddess and icon of female resistance, she was a remarkable woman of her time; and before her death in 2023, at 83, she also played a key role in the development of the tribute musical Tina, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, first seen in London in 2018, and now in Edinburgh for a two week run.

Tina is not, it should be said, a show for those who simply want a feel-good evening of Tina Turner hits, strung together with some light dialogue. Running at almost three hours, it works sometimes wordily, and sometimes painfully, through all the main episodes of Tina’s life, returning repeatedly to her troubled relationship with her mother Zelma, and featuring long dialogue scenes not only with her early musical partner and abusive husband Ike Turner, but with many other music industry friends, enemies and colleagues.

The music is always there, though, beating and surging through the narrative. It reaches full volume in the show’s second half, as Tina breaks away from Ike, into the repertoire that - legally, financially and emotionally - is truly her own, from What’s Love Got To Do With it to Simply The Best; and it is supported both by Sarah Burrell’s fine nine-piece onstage band, and by some wonderfully spectacular staging, masterminded by designer Mark Thompson, lighting man Bruno Poet, and choreographer Antony van Laast.

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None of this would work, though, without a central performance that truly captures Tina Turner’s fiery spirit and intense stage presence; and Elle Ma-Kinga N’Zuzi - one of two alternating Tinas - gradually emerges as a truly breathtaking embodiment of the star, powerfully backed by Lola McCourtie as young Tina, Letitia Hector as Zelda, and Claude East as her grandma Georgeanna. And she rises magnificently to the challenge of the show’s dazzling finale, set at the legendary Rio concert of 1988; as the audience revel in a brilliant display of red and gold light, and rise to celebrate Tina’s astonishing story of pain transformed into music, through the fire of sheer, blazing talent.

Only rare human beings, though, have a talent so outstanding that it drives them through life; and Liam, the young man at the centre of Kevin P Gilday’s new Play, Pie and Pint drama Gravity, is just an ordinary working-class boy who can no longer see any point to his life following the death of his mum, with whom he shared a Glasgow flat.

So when his high-rise block is scheduled for demolition, Liam simply refuses to budge, preferring to stay at home and contemplate suicide. His resistance to change and gentrification makes him something of a media hero; but when social worker Joanne turns up, sent by the Council to persuade Liam to move, it soon becomes clear that he is not really campaigning for anything, but only wants to be left alone with his memories, and his profound depression.

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The subject of Gilday’s play is Liam’s intense loneliness; and how Joanne, despite griefs of her own, has to navigate her role as his one possible link to a positive future, in a life that has fallen through society’s increasingly gaping cracks. And although Gilday perhaps plays with the audience’s emotions a little too theatrically in the play’s final scenes, Paul Gorman and Elaine Stirrat nonetheless bring Liam and Joanne brilliantly to life, as two rich and credible Glaswegians of our time; in a play that suggests that despite our deep 21st century failures of meaning and connection, we all still have the power to rebuild those life-saving human bonds, if we choose to use it.

Tina - The Tina Turner Musical is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh until 22 November. Gravity is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 15 November.

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