Page 41 - Lighting & Sound America (December 2019) Magazine

A key portion of “RIver Deep, Mountain High” is backed by a projection sequence featuring pulsing, highly colored acoustical panels.

in St. Louis, where her mother lives following her divorce. a cloth, but it looked too glamorous.” The designer makes
Ike is introduced in a scene featuring a band wagon and a good use of a turntable, first when Tina and her fellow
curtain. “The wall unit is a goalpost that is guided up and musicians sing “I Want to Take You Higher,” circling a bed
down, as is the door,” Thompson says. In its under-the- in the center where Ike commits serial adulteries, and at
stage position, each goalpost is fitted out with new dress- the top of Act II, when, performing “Private Dancer,” Tina is
ing, then it rises into its onstage position. surrounded by a series of men, staring and groping at her.
A major exception to this scheme is the recording studio Thompson also provides a stage set for the New York
run by Phil Spector, where Turner has a life-changing club The Ritz, where Tina finally gets the attention of a
epiphany. It’s a much more imposing design, a dark, multi- skeptical recording industry. From there, it’s a short step to
level structure treated with acoustical panels. Tina, still under the final coup de théâtre: The action returns to the void of
Ike’s thumb, looks rather lost in the space. “That’s why she’s the first scene. It is showtime and, following a blinder cue,
wearing that slightly bizarre velvet pantsuit,” Thompson the black drop flies out and the darkness is dispelled to
says. “It makes her look vulnerable. I also wanted to make reveal a multilevel stage set representing the Brazil gig.
Phil Spector look like another Svengali; he sits on the sec- (Interestingly, Thompson says, the idea of illuminated steps
ond level, the puppet master up there.” While recording in darkness was inspired by Stairway to Heaven, aka A
“River Deep, Mountain High,” she is stopped by Spector, Matter of Life and Death, the 1946 fantasy film, directed by
who gives her, possibly for the first time, a note that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, that is a postwar
acknowledges her unique talent. (He tells her to sing like British classic.)
“you’re singing to the god in yourself.”) In Warren’s perform- The memory theme is also expressed in the show cur-
ance, you can see the mental click, a moment of self-aware- tain, which contains an angled view of the top half of
ness, that is, in effect, the birth of a star. It is also the begin- Turner’s head, rendered in a style that recalls an Andy
ning of the end of her marriage to Ike. Warhol silkscreen portrait. “It’s a real photograph of her
Another large-scale set is the Vegas stage where Turner, that I found and cropped,” Thompson says, “We did a lot
having struck out on her won, toils away in a third-rate of Photoshopping of it; the idea is that she’s looking into
revue, belting “Disco Inferno.” “In London and Hamburg,” her past.” (The production’s scenery was built by PRG
Thompson says, “we had another Vegas scene, in front of Scenic Technologies, using the Stage Command automa-

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