Additional conflict comes in scenes of ugly racism while touring in the South. Not that marriage diminishes cokehead Ike’s appetite for sex with a string of other women, or his habit of silencing Tina when she voices her own opinion. Ike also decides they should marry, more for business purposes than for love, and while Tina/Anna Mae warns him, “Better Be Good to Me,” she still hasn’t quite found the inner strength to stand up to the bullying pig, dubbed “the devil” by the Ikettes. That romance yields one of the more clumsily inserted musical numbers - the Al Green song “Let’s Stay Together,” which became a comeback hit for Turner in her 1983 cover. His domineering extends to ending her relationship with sweet-natured bandmember Raymond (Gerald Caesar). Ike’s idea of that is to rule over Anna Mae and his backup singer-dancers, The Ikettes, like a hard-ass drill sergeant he also insists on a name change as she proves a natural for the spotlight and the act becomes The Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Women Who Have Made History at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The bid to marry success and self-actualization with spirituality is nothing if not ambitious, though tonal oneness proves elusive. The pulsating opening bars of “Simply the Best” then give way to Tina repeating the Buddhist chant of determination, overlapping with the Native American invocation of her Gran Georgeanna (Myra Lucretia Taylor), who is indicated to be part Cherokee.
In a moment that induces a shiver of excitement quickly followed by a giggly cringe, Warren’s Tina is first glimpsed with her back to the audience facing a golden staircase, wearing the red leather mini-dress and the “Lion King” mane that became Turner’s signature look in the ’80s. But the framing device set up in the opening minutes lets you know instantly this is going to be a bumpy dramaturgical ride. That 1993 feature starred Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner, the louse of a husband who launched her career at age 18.
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The contours of the story - with early fame overshadowed by a hellish marriage scarred by domestic violence and serial philandering, followed by a triumphant re-emergence as a solo artist who trashed the standard thinking about women aging out of pop careers - have been covered in Turner’s best-selling autobiography I, Tina, and in the film adaptation, What’s Love Got to Do With It. Katori Hall, an African American playwright who hails from Tennessee, like Turner, and is best known for her Martin Luther King drama, The Mountaintop, was brought in to overhaul the material and now gets chief credit. The show was developed by Dutch company Stage Entertainment, with an early draft of the book by the writing team of Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins.
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