Tina!

 The jukebox musical is a recent phenomenon. Familiar songs, familiar stories, and familiar reactions. There are some great ones (Jersey Boys, Beautiful) some good ones (Ain't too Proud to Beg ) some mediocre ones (Rock of Ages, On Your Feet) and some bad ones (Escape to Margaritaville). 

Tina hit town last night for the weeklong stay at the Orpheum Theater, where sound goes to die. Was Tina a great one, a good one, a mediocre one or a baddie?

Tina is the story of Tina Turner from her childhood days of Anna May Bullock, a poor child with a real dysfunctional family full of domestic abuse, abandonment and music. Tina moves to St Louis to be with her domineering mother and sister and to try and become a singer. She meets Ike Turner, joins his band, marries him and becomes a star. A miserable star indeed, beat up, humiliated and treated like a rag doll by Ike, a philandering drug addict prone to violence. Eventually she gets up the nerve to leave him, become poor again, and gets a 2nd chance at stardom and love.

Tina is not a fun watch. The music is great, the songs are great, but the story tries to cram so much into the 2 hours the music gets lost. The domestic violence scenes are brutal, the N bomb is dropped a lot (the last N bomb from a white record exec stunned the entire audience) and the story itself is cramped.

I don't know what to say other than I was entertained, but not really passionate about any of it. The actors were good, especially Tina's mother (Roz White) who got the good lines and made the most of it. Deon Lee as Ike showed why he was in the original Broadway run. He has that role perfected. Tina (Ari Groover) was a good lead, sounded like Tina Turner and carried the load of being in virtually every scene. Young Anna Mae played by a child named Symphony King, had a voice so powerful I had to see if she was really 9 years old. This kid is a phenom. 

Tina is a musical you should see if you are a fan. If you aren't, don't bother. 

The sound at this theater sucks. It always has and probably always will. I don't know if what I considered lukewarm audience reactions were a result of that or that the violence and gritty story just killed any musical momentum it had. It WAS Halloween, so maybe the demons that just to have to lurk in the 100-year-old facility were at work with the sound. There was just something off about the whole show. 

It's another On Your Feet, with violence.