Soul Sister, Hackney Empire - review

It’s surprising that the musical biopic bandwagon has taken so long to get round to Tina Turner, especially given some of the downright peculiar stops it has made in recent years. She has a back catalogue to die for, as well as an explosive life story, complete with redemptive ending, to fill out those pesky gaps between songs. Hollywood, of course, has already taken on the challenge, with no little success, in the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do with It but, fine as that was, it lacked the killer ingredient: Proud Mary belted out live in a massive production number.

I mean no disrespect to writers John Miller and Pete Brooks when I say that Soul Sister is way better than it could have been, sharp and commendably intent on employing dialogue rather than just music. Biographical details inevitably take second place to the songs, but what songs they are: Private Dancer, River Deep Mountain High, Simply the Best and many others that have us mouthing along automatically. The hits hardly stop coming, which makes a welcome change from so many other jukebox musicals in which they barely start.

When we first meet her, fresh off the bus from Tennessee, Anna Mae Bullock is all lace-up shoes and bobby socks, but that’s before she’s met charismatic bandleader and impresario Ike Turner (Chris Tummings). Soon Anna Mae becomes Tina (Emi Wokama) and she and Ike form a hard-working personal and professional partnership, touring incessantly to break out of the R and B ghetto to which black musicians were consigned. Mounting success, however, does nothing for Ike’ s aggression, paranoia, fidelity and drug use.

Wokama takes a long while to ease fully into the role in Bob Eaton’s efficient production, but when she does, at the beginning of the second half with that lung-puncturing rendition of Proud Mary, she’s unstoppable. From there on in it’ s a glistening turn and the final numbers, given as a concert performance on Tina’s 1985 comeback tour, are joyous. Her voice soars to ever greater heights and, delightfully, she has Turner’s stiletto-heeled stomp-dance down perfectly. Choreographer Jason Pennycooke supplies some suitably high-octane routines for her and the hard-working trio of backing singers The Ikettes and there’s classy support from the onstage band. I suspect we’ll be hearing considerably more of this show after its scheduled three weeks in Hackney.

Soul Sister plays until May 5 (020 8985 2424, www.hackneyempire.co.uk)

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