Tina the Tina Turner Musical at the Liverpool Empire ****

It’s rare for something that’s essentially a jukebox musical to have quite so meaty – or so hard-hitting – a storyline.

But then the torrid life story of ‘Queen of rock ‘n’ roll’ Tina Turner, she of the big hair and even bigger voice, is a dream subject for serious storytellers.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in Brownsville, Tennessee, at the start of the Second World War, the talented Turner triumphed over a whole lot of adversity on her way, in the words of a certain band from Liverpool, to ‘the toppermost of the poppermost’.

And her long and rocky road to the top is set out in detail, lots of detail, in this stage spectacular which was created in collaboration with the late songstress herself and is packing them in at the Empire this month as part of an inaugural UK tour.

We first meet the future superstar as a spiralling songbird (played with confidence by Sophia St Louis on the night I saw it) in a Nutbush church congregation and later around the family dinner table where her parents’ marriage is in meltdown – her father is a brute, her mother lacking in maternal love.

Abandoned to the care of her grandmother, as a teenager she’s packed off back to her disinterested mum in St Louis where she and sister Alline frequent the city’s nightspots and have a fateful meeting with a certain Ike Turner.

Fame, of a sort, but certainly no fortune, follows, but the positives of performing come with plenty of negatives.

The first half is resolutely downbeat despite being punctuated by some big musical numbers. In addition to Turner’s childhood being blighted by terrible parenting, her early years in the music business are underpinned by domestic violence and shocking coercive control.

Above: David King-Yombo as Ike Turner. Top: Elle Ma-Kinga N'Zuzi rocks it as Tina Turner. Photos by Johan Persson.

Of all the many appalling characters in her life, rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and sometime Svengali Ike Turner (David King-Yombo) is perhaps the undisputed champion.

I know you should try not to speak ill of the dead but even trying to explain away some of his actions by revealing his own troubled childhood doesn’t succeed in redeeming him. And certainly, the moment (plot spoiler) where Elle Ma-Kinga N’Zuzi’s Tina finally fought back caused the (female dominated) Empire audience to erupt in whoops and cheers. Yes Queen!

It was the second really big roar of appreciation of the night.

The first was just ahead of it, with Tina meeting Phil Spector and being nurtured by him into a bravura performance of River Deep – Mountain High. And it comes to something when your champion is a man later imprisoned for murdering another woman!

Saying that, Martin Allanson, channelling Spector’s otherworldliness while sporting a preposterous wig – one of several in the show, is a welcome moment of light relief in an otherwise gruelling 75 minutes.

Above: Elle Ma-Kinga N’Zuzi as Tina with the musical's ensemble. Photo by Johan Persson.

Down, but not out, the lighter, brighter second half sees Tina reinventing herself as a 1980s pop icon with the help of a small band of loyal producers and A&R types – among them her later manager, Aussie producer Roger Davies (Isaac Elder) and William Beckerleg as her devoted second husband Erwin Bach. A mention too for Richard Taylor Woods who is a hoot in a cameo role as the lovely Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 (with Sunny Afternoon vibes).

But even then, she has to battle misogyny, ageism and some ugly racism on her way to what is a triumphant, rip-roaring, on-your-feet-dancing finale.

N'Zuzi is, ahem, simply the best as the pocket rocket singer, surviving being batted and thrown all over the place to deliver some huge musical performances and commands the stage in the blistering finale. With seemingly boundless energy, she digs deep both emotionally and vocally, although doesn’t seem entirely comfortable bumping along the very bottom of her range in We Don’t Need Another Hero.

Meanwhile the ensemble shakes a vigorous tail feather in the big song-and-dance numbers.

So, it all ends on an adrenaline-spiking high.

Saying that, while I can understand the creative team’s keenness to honour Turner’s full life story, a running time that comes in at a smidgeon under three hours still feels somewhat excessive.