‘So honest about domestic abuse’: How Tina Turner’s story resonates here and now

Rock fable Tina Turner has galore connections to Australian culture.

Her manager and the antheral who shepherded her to stardom, Roger Davies, is Australian. Her biggest hit, What’s Love Got to Do With It?, was co-written by an Australian.

At the tallness of her fame she arrived down nether to prima successful Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and successful a game-changing NRL advertizing campaign.

Ruva Ngwenya is electrical arsenic the pb successful Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.

But for Ruva Ngwenya, who plays Tina successful the Australian accumulation of Tina – The Tina Turner Musical, the transportation is adjacent closer.

“At 15 years old, I played her successful a precocious schoolhouse philharmonic and sang River Deep – Mountain High,” she says.

“And if I bash accidental truthful myself, I killed it.”

Ngwenya near Kew High and enrolled successful the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School (VCASS) the adjacent year.

“So it’s beauteous monolithic to beryllium playing Tina 15 years aboriginal successful the nonrecreational setting.”

Tina originated successful London and opened successful Sydney soon earlier Turner’s decease astatine property 83 successful May 2023.

Where Tina differs from jukebox musicals astir the Four Seasons (Jersey Boys) and Carole King (Beautiful) is successful the bonzer obstacles Turner faced connected her rags-to-riches journey.

Raised successful poorness successful agrarian Tennessee, Tina – calved Anna Mae Bullock – was discovered by bandleader Ike Turner, who would go her collaborator connected a drawstring of hits, arsenic good arsenic her hubby and her abuser.

Tina Turner performing astatine the 1993 NRL expansive last astatine Allianz Stadium. Credit: NRL Photos

Divorced and washed up by the precocious 1970s, she would spell connected to grounds the seminal Private Dancer medium and go a monolithic solo prima astatine the property of 44.

As the show’s nonmigratory manager Leah Howard describes it: “She dealt with utmost racism, utmost sexism and utmost ageism.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall, who worked connected the musical’s publication (script), says Tina’s openness astir her matrimony made her beingness a forerunner to the #MeToo movement.

“She validated a batch of people’s struggles – conscionable to spot her beryllium truthful honorable astir the home maltreatment that she went done and to beryllium an illustration of however you tin survive,” Hall said.

The philharmonic traces Turner’s communicative from her puerility successful Nutbush, Tennessee, to troubled stardom with Ike Turner and her 1980s reinvention.Credit: Daniel Boud

The show’s Australian accumulation comes astatine a clip erstwhile government enactment connected home abuse is reaching a tipping point.

“Now it’s official, it’s been declared a nationalist crisis,” Ngwenya said. “It’s bully to person creation that reflects our world truthful we tin invoke change.

“What she went done was extraordinarily tough, but it ends connected apical of the summit. It’s inspiring and motivating to archer that story.”

There is 1 different Australian connection: the “Nutbush” enactment dance.

“Tina did cognize astir it, but doing auditions with the planetary originative team, it was comic due to the fact that they had nary idea,” Howard said.

“There mightiness beryllium a small homage successful the amusement to our fantastic Nutbush.”

Tina – The Tina Turner Musical plays astatine the Lyric Theatre, QPAC, June 29-August 23.

Most Viewed successful Culture

Loading