The better pop/rock biomusicals all have substantial narratives; those without are merely concerts performed by impersonators. The story of Tina Turner has substance by the barrowload: Anna Mae Bullock’s neglected childhood in Nutbush, Tennessee... her teenage move to St Louis... discovery by R&B revue leader Ike Turner, who remoulded her, renamed her, took her to soul stardom (or travelled there on her back) and beat seven shades of hell out of her... flight from Ike, years of anonymity before her 1980s reinvention in terms of rock rather than soul... global superstardom.

Adrienne Warren piles energy and commitment into the role of Tina; no wonder she has a programme-credited subordinate – she surely couldn’t manage eight shows a week of such intensity. Her singing voice is likewise fiery, and strongly similar to latter-day Turner, although she can’t quite flush the throatiness away for the early material. The songs themselves do not stick to chronological order, but are used as they should be in a stage musical, to illuminate particular points of the story: the very first number, winningly, shows the young Anna Mae in church in a hot-gospelling arrangement of “Nutbush City Limits”. Sometimes, though, anachronism creeps into even the “performance” sequences.

Katori Hall, who has written the book, showed with her breakthrough play The Mountaintop that she can handle discreet hagiography (in that case, of Martin Luther King) whilst giving the appearance of more nuance. Here, alas, there’s no nuance at all. Tina is first a martyr then the exalted mistress of her own desires; all the blame lies with other parties, whether her mother, Ike (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith was loudly booed on the final preview curtain-call), or even her managers, first loyal friend Rhonda then her rediscoverer Roger Davies, when they try to suggest career moves she dislikes. I’ve never seen a more one-sided portrait in a show like this. Director Phyllida Lloyd, too, moves action along and intercuts it fluidly, but spends the final phase of the show assiduously building up to a nakedly adulatory climax and concert-style encore. If Turner weren’t a Buddhist (the show has four “nam myoho renge kyo” chanting scenes), the only word for this fervour would be evangelical.

Written for the Financial Times.