Adrienne Warren, center, stars in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – Orpheum Theater – Minneapolis MN – March 1st 2023
Hennepin Theater Trust and The Orpheum Theatre presents “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” this March, a story of the life of the legendary Tina Turner.
This may go without saying to some, but to those not familiar with Tina Turner‘s life, I feel it’s important to put a warning on this review. This musical deals with difficult topics, including both child and spousal abuse. Both are covered on stage and I know these subjects can be hard on some people.
One of the unfortunate aspects of the media review night for this musical is that a majority of the main cast for “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” was ill. As a result, the understudies played most of the characters. Because of this, I’m not entirely sure we saw what would be the best version of the musical. There were some very awkward pauses throughout. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it didn’t seem to be. The pacing also felt off. I honestly wish we had seen a production of the musical with the leading actors to see if that was the issue that evening.
The sets were very lacking. I remember originally seeing an ad for this musical and thinking it was going to a huge stage production. It wasn’t. The huge stage production I saw on the ad was actually the end scene. So that was a bit disappointing. When you’re going to see a musical about the life of a legendary musician, I feel it isn’t too much to ask that the production feel just as amazing as the woman herself.
One of the things I was most excited about was the music. Tina Turner‘s music is amazing and one of the things I was most curious about was music placement. I can’t imagine that’s an easy job. She has a huge catalog and fitting a selection into less than three hours is tough. The song selection was quite good, with one song feeling a bit strange.
If you don’t know “We Don’t Need Another Hero”, you may not understand why this felt misplaced. The song was released on the soundtrack to “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”. When it was released, the song and video were played constantly. The video was fully based on the film. So even just with that bit of information, I think you understand why we feel it strange to include a song that makes us think of nothing but a fictional post apocalyptic war zone. I mean, there’s so many other songs.
In conclusion, I don’t know if I would recommend this musical to people or not. It’s really hard to tell when we’re not viewing it with the original cast. It’s not to say that the understudies don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s entirely possible that some of the downfalls of the night were due to that. If you’re looking for a production with a magnificent stage show, you won’t find it here. The story itself is well told and that is something. However, I feel there is much left to be desired.