What’s love got to do with it? Apparently, it has everything to do with Asteria Theatre’s Broadway series “TINA—The Tina Turner Musical”.

The Tina Turner Musical was a phenomenal show with emotionally moving and toe-tapping vocal performances. The show is a biographical jukebox musical, set to Turner’s greatest hits. It was written but Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall.

I didn’t know very much about Tina Turner or her life, but I had high hopes for this musical which more than lived up to the hype. Seeing this musical has inspired me to learn more about her life and listen to more of her music catalog.

The story follows Turner from her childhood, showing her parents’ physically violent relationship that ended with her mother and sister leaving. The story tells how Turner met her future husband Ike Turner, who jump-started her music career, and their fraught and abusive relationship.

Act I ends with Turner leaving him and their band and pleading sanctuary at a hotel. Act II follows Turner reinventing herself as a solo act and the struggles she faced getting a record deal as a Black woman in her 40s.

The show does not shy away from visceral depictions of domestic violence. The cyclical nature of domestic violence is a major theme throughout the musical. While it is obvious that the altercations are choreographed stage combat, with no real force behind the blows, the actors fully embodied the physical and emotional reactions to violence that made the scenes hard to watch.

Darilyn Burtley’s portrayal of Tina Turner conveyed the gravity of the situation she found herself in and created an emotional bond with the audience.

The show features many of Turner’s most beloved hits, such as “Proud Mary”, “(Simply) The Best” and “River Deep—Mountain High”. These are all songs that I am familiar with that I didn’t realize were popularized by Tina Turner. Since seeing this musical I have added them to my current rotation of songs.

The set was minimal and used a video screen to build most of the atmosphere and scenery. The visuals were beautiful and featured scenes of sunsets and silhouettes of forests to convey small sleepy southern towns at the beginning of the musical. They transitioned to abstract, swirling designs that showed how Turner’s music developed over time.

Motifs of orange, blue, and green tied all of the visuals together to create a cohesive background that drove the story.

Unfortunately, the performance suffered from a few audio issues. There was a shrieking feedback from the microphones at one of Turner’s vocal entrances that had audience members covering their ears.

At several points, there were several seconds of delay between the singer and mics turning on, which was jarring and pulled me out of the story. They also seemed to have trouble with the volume. At the beginning of the show, the instrumentals almost drowned out the vocals so that it was difficult to hear.

It was unclear if the issues arose due to issues with Asteria’s sound system or because of issues with the show’s technical crew.
Previous broadway performances in Asteria did not have the same issues or if they did, were not nearly as noticeable as the sound issues in this show.

My favorite part of the night was the encore. After the actors took their bows, Tina Turner and her backup dancers returned and performed “Nutbush City Limits” and “Proud Mary” concert style. The audience was invited to stand up and “get in the groove”. The energy was electric and it was a triumphant end to the evening.