Simply the best

PEOPLE keep asking Emily Wokoma how she’s managing to get through eight shows a week as the star of Soul Sister. After all, playing such an flashy, sassy diva as Tina Turner on stage isn’t a role you can stroll through.

It demands energy, lots of it, and stamina to play the soul diva in a show inspired by the music, life and times of Ike and Tina Turner.

This new musical is currently playing the Savoy in London’s West End before heading out on tour to York, Darlington and Billingham .

“I’m really really enjoying it. It’s so much fun,” says Wokoma of her first starring part following appearances in shows such as Hairspray, Little Shop Of Horrors and Porgy And Bess.

“As for people saying about ‘getting through’ eight shows a week, I don’t think of it as ‘getting through’. I’m doing a job and everything will be fine although touring can be quite tiring because of the kind of show it is.”

It was never going to be a walk in the park playing a role she sees as as an acting performance not an impersonation. Turner is labelled as “one of the greatest singers of all time” (that was Rolling Stone magazine) who has had a career spanning more than 50 years with album and single sales adding up to 180 million copies worldwide. But Wokoma appears to have pulled it off with critical comments like “stardom surely awaits” and “her sensational turn as Tina should be the making of her... a voice that could make your hair stand on end”.

SHE started singing seriously when she was nine. “So singing has always been in me and then I got into musical theatre. I was at grammar school until I was 14, then I went to performing arts school and drama school at 19,” she explains.

Wokoma was very familiar with Tina’s music.

“Mum and dad always used to play her songs,” she says, “And I remember when Chris Eubank was boxing he used to come out to Simply The Best. Her songs were played at our parties so she was well-known in our family.

“In this show it’s not an impersonation – I am an actress telling her story. in real life I don’t look anything like her, but I have the wigs, the make-up, the costumes and my physical performance so hopefully the acting draws people along with it, “The show starts off with a bit of a flashback. Then she meets Ike and the music comes along. The second half has more songs people are familiar with, and then we go back to a concert in the 1980s.”

It took two auditions for her to land the role in which she stars opposite Chris Tummings as Ike Turner. “I did a lot of Tina Turner research beforehand. You have to because you know what they’re going to be looking for in the person playing her. It’s her energy rather than an impersonation, although I still don’t know why I got the job,” she says.

She hasn’t seen Tina Turner perform live, but knows the producers spoke to the Grammy award-winning artist before embarking on the project. Wokoma’s not sure if Tina will be coming to see the show.

The most dramatic element of the story must be Ike and Tina’s stormy sometimes violent relationship, which featured heavily in the film What’s Love Got To Do With It. “We don’t glamorise the violence or hide away from it,” she says.

“It happened in their relationship, but Ike is no longer with us. What we don’t do is what the Hollywood version did, which Tina Turner was not happy with. That’s not what their relationship is all about.

“I was nervous about playing that side of things. But they did love each other.

It was a different time and a different era and men and women’s relationships were different. That was something I had to get my head around but we are dealing with it on stage.”

Performing Tina’s songs on stage every night isn’t difficult but being disciplined, taking care of her voice and going to bed early is. “I love going out and having a laugh. But you have to treat your voice and body like you’re in training for an event,” she says.

The show features many of the songs with which Turner is associated – Simply The Best, River Deep Mountain High, Proud Mary, Private Dancer and of course What’s Love Got To Do With It. Wokoma says they’re amazing songs to sing – “every belter’s dream” as she puts it.

“It’s really hard not to get the energy because there is that anticipation from the audience, They’re willing you to go along with it. I’m naturally quite a hyper person. I don’t really get down, and the energy backstage is electric..”

Finding a role to equal playing Tina Turner won’t be easy, but she doesn’t think any other job would be as physically demanding as this one. The tour lasts until December, then the show goes to Holland and back to the UK for more dates next year.

And how would she sum up Tina Turner’s appeal?

“She’s sexy and talented, and she’s quite rare in the music industry because she’s honest in her performances,” says Wokoma.

• Tour dates:

York Grand Opera House, Oct 1-6. Box Office: 0844-8713024 and atgtickets.com/york

Darlington Civic Theatre, Nov 19-24. Box Office: 01325-486555 online darlingtonarts.co.uk

Billingham Forum Theatre, Feb 4-9. Box Office: 01642-552663 and forumtheatrebillingham.co.uk