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Simply making the best of Tina
A sister with soul: Emi Wokoma as the legendary Tina Turner Soul Sister Belgrade
Theatre ****
THIS is an absolute ‘WOW' of a show! Ike (Chris Tummings) and Tina
Turner (Emi Wokoma) are the main subjects with the focus firmly on Tina.
We pick up the story
when little Annie Mae
Bullock, an innocent 16 year old in house dress and short white socks
auditions for Ike Turner, a
well-known and respected impresario. Her belting version of
Amazing Grace impresses him to the extent that his prejudices,
particularly against women in his band The Rhythm Kings, are
overcome in an instant. He becomes her Svengali, her lover and her
tormenter. In exchange, he develops her career, her voice and turns Tina
into a megastar. The story, directed by Pete
Brooks and Bob Eaton, is told with energetic stage sets of Tina's music
interspersed with dialogue. It is always great to see the musicians on
stage. What is also great about this production is the use of video
screens to put the story in context and, from this, her successful
career is all the more laudable. As a teenager in Nutbush,
Tennessee the attitude to black women is a double bind. To be black is
one set back, to be a woman in an age when, as Malcolm X put it, the
position of women was ‘prone' was another. In 1963 when Rosa Parks sat in
the ‘whites only' section on that downtown bus, the scene was set for
changes that were long overdue. The music business in which little Annie
Mae, the now renamed Tina Turner, is engaged is at the centre of a small
tornado of change. The Black Power movement of
the 60s supported her rise. Her powerful voice, endless energy, great
looks and dauntless personality – all echoed in the amazing Emi Wokoma
– set her apart. The fact that on stage she was a superstar and at home
an abused wife was tackled sensitively though grew some gasps from the
audience. The rise of feminism was also
a coincidental support for her career, and as she split from Ike, over
his legendary unfaithfulness, ‘handiness' and coke habit, she reinvented
herself from nothing and succeeded all over again with songs such as
What's Love Gotta Do with It, Addicted to Love. I remember the first time I
ever heard River Deep, Mountain High and it was on Radio Caroline
at the tender and impressionable age of 13 – and I have been a fan ever
since. Her energy is undimmed and this show is a suitable celebration of
a wonderful woman. She is Simply the Best. To 03-11-12 Jane Howard
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