Arts & Culture

What: Tina — The Tina Turner Musical
Where: CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St.
When: Now, until Sun., July 28
Highlight: Zurin Villanueva’s supernova performance as Tina
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Director Phyllida Lloyd’s propulsive production is a surprisingly dynamic piece of theatre.

WHEN FACED WITH  a good-but-not-great jukebox musical, critics often end up recommending it to superfans of the artist whose catalogue the show plunders. If you love Alanis Morissette, check out Jagged Little Pill. A devotee of Roy Orbison? Head over to In Dreams.

With the current national tour of Tina — The Tina Turner Musical, now playing at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, I’m tempted to do the opposite. As someone who’s familiar with Turner in a passing sense but hasn’t explored her work deeply, I found the show conventional yet effective. Although Katori Hall’s biographical book is by the numbers, perhaps not living up to the legend of the woman herself, director Phyllida Lloyd’s propulsive production is a surprisingly dynamic piece of theatre on its own terms.

After an opening scene set at Turner’s Guinness World Record-breaking 1988 concert in Rio, the show offers a chronological rendering of the singer’s life. We see Tina (Zurin Villanueva at the performance I attended) grow up in 1940s Tennessee before getting embroiled in St. Louis’s nightclub scene, where she meets the violent Ike Turner (Deon Releford-Lee), with whom she records and marries. Then it’s divorce and her solo career, greatly abbreviated: a dark period in Vegas, followed by the recording of What’s Love Got to Do with It — her first No. 1 hit — and a concluding return to the Brazil show.

Because the role of Tina is so demanding, another actress, Ari Groover, performs Tina at half the performances. This split workload means Villanueva can wholly commit herself to Tina’s mountainous climb from jittery, overenthusiastic teenager to middle-aged star who owns every room she enters. During musical numbers, Villanueva’s a supernova, kicking her spindly legs toward the sky and belting with jet-plane force. But her performance remains physical even when the show decrescendos: the peaks and valleys of Tina’s life seem to reverberate through her entire body.

Set designer Mark Thompson keeps it economical — there’s no fixed scenery, just the occasional piece of furniture. But Jeff Sugg’s projections are a near-constant presence. Often, they evoke a specific location: nothing special there. What gets interesting are their journeys into a more impressionistic register, whether it’s abstract splatters of paint capturing the passion coursing through Tina or a blinding white wall punctuating a shocking development in the plot. There are some genuinely arresting visual moments in Tina, which makes sense when you look at Lloyd’s varied resume, where the Mamma Mia! film sits next to a trilogy of borderline experimental Shakespeare adaptations set in a prison. The former is nearer to Tina, of course — but look closely and you might see traces of the latter’s boldness.

Again, if you’re Turner-obsessed, it’ll be easy to find holes in Tina. When it comes to singing, Villanueva tends toward impersonation, inviting comparison, which is never helpful. And on opening night, the runtime neared three hours, including intermission and a way-too-long encore — probably not necessary, considering the story doesn’t dig very deep. Even so, daring visuals and great music are a combination I have a hard time rejecting. As jukebox musicals go, this one’s easy to embrace.