There was an awkward moment last June when Phyllida Lloyd flew to Tina Turner’s home in Switzerland to ask the 78-year-old rock star why she wanted her traumatic life story turned into a West End musical, a project which Lloyd had been hired to direct. Turner paused, inhaled, and raised a palm. “I don’t,” she told Lloyd. “I don’t need a musical. But I get cards, letters… people said I gave them hope. I have to pass that on.”
Nine months later, a row of Tina posters encircles the Edwardian exterior of the Aldwych Theatre in London. In the foyer, wardrobe assistants flip through rails of costumes, beginning with the boxy cotton frocks worn in Turner’s hometown of Nutbush, Tennessee, and ending...