If you remember Tammy Faye Bakker at all from the peak of her ’80s televangelical fame, you’ll most likely remember the scandals, the mascara, the tarantula-leg eyelashes, the big, big hair, the prescription drugs and maybe the groundbreaking on-air interview she did with AIDS patient Steven Pieters, all at a time when Evangelical Christians weren’t well known for any of the above.
Even if you don’t remember any of those details, you still might just have a vague feeling of over-the-top fun associated with her, a self-knowing clownishness when the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jerry Falwells of her world leaned decidedly toward the self-important variety.
By all rights, Tammy Faye – she dropped the Bakker after divorcing her cheating, possibly gay husband and partner in the God business Jim Bakker – should make for a delicious stage musical, maybe something along the lines of Titanique or some of the sillier moments of the otherwise tedious Diana: The Musical.
Tammy Faye, that musical is not. Opening tonight at Broadway‘s Palace Theater, with a book by James Graham, lyrics by Jake Shears and music by Elton John, Tammy Faye is only slightly more fun than church on a hot July day. All concerned seem absolutely determined to transform the town madcap into a respectable, saintly and rather dull church-lady-next-door.
Directed with occasional flair by Rupert Goold, Tammy Faye stars Katie Brayben, a perfectly pleasant British actress who grasps Tammy Faye’s Minnesota accent with more aplomb than she grasps the preacher’s outré panache. This Tammy Faye comes across more as the somewhat unconventional neighbor you recall so fondly from your childhood, and not as the boundary-breaking eccentric who singlehandedly upended the stodgy world of Christian evangelism during the Reagan Era.
On a set (designed by Bunny Christie) dominated by a bank of TV screens that function as studio monitors, Laugh-in Joke Wall pop-outs (look, there’s the Pope!), and, when combined into one screen, massive facial close-ups, Tammy Faye chronicles the rise and fall and spiritual-rise again of its title character. Born Tamara Faye LaValley, Tammy casts her personal and business lot in the 1970s with a young, ambitious and altogether corny traveling preacher (he uses Muppet-like puppets in his sermons).
When the couple catches the eye of a young cable exec named Ted Turner, the Bakkers soon find themselves on the ground floor of both an industry, a revolution and another in America’s periodic religious awakenings. Unlike their dour, fire and brimstone peers Falwell and Swaggart, the Bakkers seem more like the fun-news hosts of a morning cooking and crafts show. And they catch on, especially Tammy Faye, who steals the spotlight from her more button-down husband merely by connecting with their TV audience through her vulnerability and self-deprecating humor. Not to mention a look that, we’re told but never really shown here, all but screams she’s about to sock it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.
The couple’s success riles up their more staid evangelical counterparts, who soon scheme to bring the duo down by any means necessary. Financial irregularities? Call the IRS. Fraud? Call the FBI. Jim’s confused character? Call Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard), the besotted PTL Club church volunteer who will soon take a place alongside Donna Rice as precursors to the sort of maligned scandal-bait perfected a few years later by Monica Lewinsky.
So there’s the opening prayer. You don’t have to have been around way back when to figure where Tammy Faye is headed: Downfall, divorce, jail for Jim, and a sort of befuddled “how did I get here?” last act for Tammy Faye, who the musical does its best to portray as a naif whose only crime is a taste for nice clothes, good cosmetics and lots and lots of pills. If she never really questions just where all that money is coming from – i.e., those rubes out there she professes to love so much – well, so be it. Doesn’t Jim handle all that boring finance stuff anyway?
With a plot as thin as the paper of a Bible page, Tammy Faye‘s only hope for salvation would have been some kooky singing and dancing, and yet the show falls short here too. The John-Shears songs are generally a bland blend of pop and gospel, without the goofy fun of the former or rousing emotion of the latter. Like Lynne Page’s uninvolving choreography, the songs generally can’t decide whether they want to mimic the musical numbers of ’80s variety shows or mock them, and so does neither particularly well.
The cast mostly does its best to bring some vigor to the proceedings, though, like Brayben in the title role, most seem to be reined in (by Goold?) from full-on outlandishness, and more’s the pity. Christian Borle, one of the stage’s most reliably entertaining actors, turns in a two-note Jim Bakker (doofus here, crybaby there), while Michael Cerveris makes for a suitably villainous Jerry Falwell. But truth be told, is anyone really in the mood for a villainous, politically ambitious Jerry Falwell these days?
And maybe that, in the end, is the problem with Tammy Faye. The bad guys, with their cynical take on religion and right-wing politics, are all too bad (credibly so) while our good girl is just not bad enough. When she finally meets her maker, would it have been too much to hope that the stage fog will clear to reveal a well-stocked Sephora? Give those eyes of Tammy Faye what they deserve.
Title: Tammy Faye
Venue: Broadway’s Palace Theatre
Director: Rupert Goold
Book: James Graham
Music: Elton John
Lyrics: Jake Shears
Cast: Katie Brayben, Christian Borle, Michael Cerveris, Autumn Hurlbert, Nick Bailey, Charl Brown, Mark Evans, Allison Guinn, Ian Lassiter, Raymond J. Lee, Max Gordon Moore, Alana Pollard, Andy Taylor, and Amanda Clement, Michael Di Liberto, Jonathan Duvelson, Lily Kaufmann, Denis Lambert, Elliott Mattox, Brittany Nicholas, Keven Quillon, Aveena Sawyer, Allysa Shorte, TJ Tapp, Daniel Torres, and Dana Wilton
Running time: 2 hr 35 min (including intermission)
English (US) ·