I'm Every Woman - The Chaka Khan Musical

I'm Every Woman follows a teenager who joins the Black Panthers' breakfast programme, changes her name, and is fronting a band before she is old enough to sign her own contracts. Chaka Khan's voice opens doors early, and the show is mostly about what she finds on the other side of them.

There is the band, Rufus, and the records that made her. There is a business that wants the voice and not the woman attached to it, contracts written to be misunderstood, and executives who keep explaining what audiences will accept. There is motherhood arranged around tour dates, and there are the years of addiction she has spoken about publicly and at length. The show does not skip that part.

Nia T. Hill wrote the book and Racky Plews directs, with the score assembled from Khan's own catalogue: "Tell Me Something Good", "Sweet Thing", "Ain't Nobody", "I Feel For You", "Through The Fire". It was made with Khan's involvement rather than around her, which is why the difficult stretches are in it at all.

The staging is built as a concert that keeps being interrupted by the life behind it, with a live band, big ensemble numbers, and a title role required to sing material very few performers can attempt.

What holds it together is a career argument: Khan spent fifty years refusing to be marketed as one thing, and the show treats that stubbornness as the achievement rather than the obstacle.