Theater: “Tina: the Tina Turner Musical” @ the Lunt-Fontaine theater

Tina Turner’s concert in the mid-1980s was one of the most exciting I’d ever attended. Her familiarity, humor, and warmth made me (and thousands of others in the audience) feel that we had known her forever. She shimmied, she belted, she was just…well, Tina.

That high-pitched excitement was present in the finale of “Tina: the Tina Turner Musical.” In this iteration, Ms Turner is played by Nkeki Obi-Melekwe, who was said to be hand-chosen by TT herself from the West End production. Not only did the athletic O-M have the audience on its feet, she sure-footedly ran up and down a glittering staircase reminiscent of a Busby Berkelee musical, while singing “Simply the Best.” Your money’s worth, 2.0.

Regretfully, those moments of excitement were sporadic in this fairly conventional jukebox musical. TT’s rags-to-riches life story was dutifully documented—from her youth as Anna May Bulloch in small-town Tennessee, to her meetup with, eventual marriage to, and subsequent abuse by Ike Turner (Nick Rashad Burroughs).

The second act of TTTTM becomes more interesting as it reveals information we may not have known so well: TT’s reinvention, after her divorce from Ike, as a rock n roll singer. She initially resisted abandoning her r&b persona. But once she hit it big with “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” she assumed her role as queen of rock n roll. “James Brown in a mini-skirt,” as a wag once pointed out.

While the musical is not perfect, It is hard to resist the classics that do land. For me, those included “River Deep—Mountain High,” “Let’s Stay Together,” and of course “Proud Mary”—all of which were the original property of Darlene Love, Al Green, and Credence Clearwater Revival, respectively, but covered masterfully by TT and O-M.

With the superb and funny NaTasha Yvette Williams as Tina’s grouchy mother, the equally superb and funny Ari Groomer as her sister, and Charlie Franklin as Roger, the Australian agent who rescued her from Las Vegas—“the singer’s graveyard.”

In short, the TT musical, while entertaining, was not as transcendent as “MJ,” the Michael Jackson musical which if there were a deity in heaven should upset “Strange Loop” and win the best musical Tony tomorrow night. Win or lose, musicals like TTTTM will keep on rolling down the river.