Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews for the musical based on Tina Turner’s life and career, which has transferred to Broadway. But what have critics made of it?
The New York Times: “What I’ve just described is a rock concert — which is what Tina essentially turns into. It’s a blast if that’s what you came for. If you meant to see a true union of song and story, though, you won’t get it here.”
Rolling Stone: ★★★ “Tina Turner is a star, and so is Adrienne Warren, who unleashes something volcanic from within herself while channeling the Queen of Rock & Roll.”
Variety: “Warren lends her own style and her own soul to the music, bringing something special and more personal to familiar numbers like the shivery-good ‘River Deep, Mountain High’.”
New York Post: “You come to Tina for the songs. Director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) stages them smoothly, with vibrant pops of colour that ripple off the shimmering fringe of Mark Thompson’s costumes. And all of them – including ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’, ‘Private Dancer’ and ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ – sound glorious. During the exuberant final concert, Warren isn’t just rolling on the river: She’s stampeding through Broadway.”
Deadline.com: “Warren performs an ecstatic song-and-dance, giving Tina the ending that somehow, someway, captures all the excitement, joy and flamboyance of that real-life woman whose name is finally and fittingly in the brightest of lights once more.”
Wall Street Journal: “Ms. Warren is a leggy, big-voiced knockout who sounds a lot like Ms. Turner in full cry, and the production, which originated in London and is directed by England’s Phyllida Lloyd, is satisfyingly slick.”
Broadway World: “Impressed with the overall slick professionalism of a production that aggressively entertains while telling its story with humour and dramatic finesse.”
Mashable.com: “Set and costume designer Mark Thompson does a fabulous job re-creating Turner’s stage looks, and it’s those big performance scenes where Warren is able to cut loose that Tina most comes alive.”
New York Stage Review: “Having been lucky enough to catch Tina Turner in concert before she essentially retired from touring, I can report that Tina, for all its huffing and puffing, doesn’t capture the force of nature she was in live performance. That’s not a criticism of Warren; it’s just a reminder that a better, truer and generally less expensive way to appreciate our favourite artists is through their own work.”
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical continues to play at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
