When “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” opened at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in November 2019, Tina Turner surprised everyone when she walked on stage during the curtain call.
She thanked the cast and soaked up the star-studded audience’s adoration before making a short speech.
“This musical is my life,” she said, “but it’s like poison that turned to medicine. I can never be as happy as I am now.”
Those words likely resonated throughout the Broadway production that continued through early 2020 before taking a COVID pandemic hiatus until its final stretch in 2021-22.
And although they weren’t on the stage for that speech, the show’s tour cast coming to Tucson’s Centennial Hall Oct. 3-8 is well aware of how the iconic queen of rock ‘n’ roll felt about the bio musical.
Turner was involved throughout the show’s creative process, including consulting on her famous dance moves and working with director Phyllida Lloyd on how the characters were portrayed.
“She approved of everything. This was sort of her ‘this is my last gift to anybody who was a Tina Turner fan,’” said Ari Groover, one of two actresses playing Turner on the tour. “This was obviously her last moment, especially after retiring, of showing her love to people.”
Groover said the fans return that love every night with prolonged applause and more than a few audible sobs that seem more visceral since Turner died in May at the age of 83.
“The audience has so much love for this beautiful woman and her works of art and who she was as a person,” Groover said days after she joined the tour full-time in Seattle on Sept. 12. “In this show you get to understand her life better.”
Groover has a long relationship with the jukebox musical. She played Turner’s sister, Alline, and was the Tina understudy on Broadway from 2020 until it closed in 2022. She also played Tina in the roadshow for a short stint before coming in September.
“Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” covers all the bases of Turner’s life and career, from the time she met Ike Turner when she was still in high school, to the abuse she endured during their tumultuous 17-year personal and professional relationship to her struggles and triumphs as she discovered her strength and voice as a Black female solo artist in an industry dominated by powerful, mostly white men.
The story takes us from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, when Turner met Erwin Bach, a German music executive 17 years her junior, who she eventually married in 2013.
Groover said each night on stage, “I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure that her story will be remembered as a celebration.”
“We’re not trying to be Tina Turner; that is not necessarily the goal and Tina has said this herself,” said Groover, who is the co-creator of the New York pop-up Broadway community dance dance party S.N.O.B. and is an active DJ. “She said to play my story, you have to be authentically you, so it is important for us to be honest with the storytelling we’re doing that makes Tina’s story beautiful.”
The show features some of Turner’s most iconic hits, including “The Best,” “Better Be Good to Me,” “River Deep — Mountain High,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” “A Fool in Love,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “I Can’t stand the Rain” and “Proud Mary” among them.
Groover said her favorite song to sing in the show is “Nutbush City Limits.”
“It’s such a fun song,” she said.
She also likes the Ike and Tina-era song “Higher” and Turner’s cover of the Beatles “Come Together.”
But the song that gets the biggest reaction from the audience is “Proud Mary.”
“It’s a classic. Everybody knows it, everybody loves the dances that come with it,” said Groover, whose little brother Gino was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in July. “We do that song twice in the show and each time we do it, the second time is even bigger.”
