STAGE REVIEW : ‘I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine’ . . . It Doesn’t

No one struts across a stage like Tina Turner. But Rhodessa Jones comes close.

“I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” at the New Ivar Theatre, combines rough facsimiles of Ike and Tina Turner, a plot that’s like a two-actor variation on “A Star Is Born,” and an attempt to make a political statement, all in one package. It’s not a perfect fit.

Jones’ physical resemblance to Tina is hardly uncanny. Her face isn’t as feline, and she has more finely muscled upper-body weight. In fact, she’s careful not to mention Turner; she plays someone named Rita Golden.

But it’s no coincidence that Rita’s in-performance moves are remarkably similar to Tina’s, and watching those fiercely assertive stances and those magnetic shimmies is the next best thing to watching Tina in concert. Jones has a strong voice, too, though her words are sometimes blurred by the sound system.

Idris Ackamoor plays Prince Golden, the Ike figure, with a lean, mean look and a set of delirious riffs on his sax. In one scene, he makes acrobatic dance moves simultaneously with a jazzy cadenza on his horn, apparently on just one breath. However, as the only live instrumentalist, accompanying a track that was recorded by a group called Rock of Ages, Ackamoor’s music sometimes sounds vaguely disconnected, as if it’s being performed in a vacuum.

It’s difficult to re-create the ambience of a live Ike and Tina concert with only two performers on stage; this is where the impersonation part of the show begins to break down.

The play itself, written by Ed Bullins with Ackamoor, Jones and director Brian Freeman, is conventionally plotted. It’s framed at beginning and end by a meeting of the older and wiser Rita and Prince at the dive in East St. Louis where they started their collaboration. They’ve come to sort out the terms of their final split.

From there they flashback to the first meeting between the sexy band leader and the giggling school girl. Then we leapfrog across their mutual history, witnessing samples of both their onstage performances and their offstage tempests, with occasional comments aimed directly at the audience.

The couple’s chemistry is all too combustible and the explosions are staged well (watch out for the battered bouquet and scalding pot scenes). Prince takes most of the blame. As depicted here, he was a drug addict and a wife-beater. This is where the politics come in. Prince gets a couple of speeches in which he bitterly lashes out at the racism directed against black musicians, and black men in general. His virulent treatment of Rita is seen as a product of society’s virulent treatment of him.

It’s a point that could use some fleshing out. The speeches seem tacked on in order to give the show some political heft, to lift it above the level of celebrity voyeurism. They’re not integrated into the drama itself--a task made harder by the constraints of the two-person format. The same political points were made much more effectively in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Dreamgirls.”

Of course a feminist statement is also made, and Jones embodies Rita’s liberation from the shackles of Prince’s abuse with icy dignity. Even here, however, the spareness of the format--rather than concentrating our attention--makes the show more shallow. We hear nothing new about these issues. When tackling social problems, it helps to viscerally feel the presence of that society.

“I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” New Ivar Theatre, 1605 N. Ivar St., Hollywood. Saturday, 8 p.m. In rep with “Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women,” a solo show about prison inmates, written and performed by Jones, directed by Ackamoor, tonight, 8 p.m. and Sunday, 3 p.m. $15. (213) 464-3667. Running time of “Work Out”: 2 hours, 10 minutes.