LOS ANGELES — Reverence for Tina Turner electrified the Hollywood Pantages Theatre during Wednesday night’s opening of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” which landed in L.A. a month after the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll died at home in Switzerland at the age of 83.
It’s one thing to watch a bio-jukebox musical about a star who has long been gone but quite another to sit in the audience for a show about a legend who passed toward the tail end of her eponymous show’s inaugural North American tour. The audience arrived ready for a welcome release from the sorrow they’d felt since Turner’s death. Handkerchiefs were at the ready, murmurs of praise abundant and the applause roaring.
The Playbill program cover for the show has been modified to feature a portrait of Turner with her birth and death dates printed below; there are guest books in the lobby for fans to write tributes in; and at the end of the show on opening night, the cast gathered onstage to pay tribute to their hero.
