TAMMY FAYE Not Ready For This Close-Up — Review

If the campy televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker can attribute her fall from grace to the crimes committed by the men around her, whose misconduct she may have done well to further investigate, then Tammy Faye, the musical which just opened at the Palace Theatre, should know to point a kitschy finger back at its own creative team when litigating what went wrong. In a case of art imitating life, the production introduces a woman with a knack for proselytizing fire then works as hard as it can against her.

That central figure is here played by Katie Brayben, who imbues so much heart and charisma into the role of Tammy Faye that it is a genuine shame that her character goes largely unexplored in favor of telling a too-vast story. Elton John has written a church-ready score, with Jake Shears providing lyrics that (not always successfully) blur the line between the earnestness of the believer and the kitschiness of the connoisseur. Their work is largely good and Bakker’s story remains compellingly fastened to the crux of American politics, religion, and meteoric, mediated success.

It’s through James Graham’s book, and Rupert Goold’s direction, that the musical, which opened to relative acclaim in London in 2022 before an allegedly major overhaul, stumbles.

Introduced during the cancer screening we know will take her life, Tammy Faye is brought back to college, where she falls for the goofy, young evangelist Jim (Christian Borle). Their courtship and TV success are quick to come, and their preaching duo is placed against others in on the praying game, such as Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris) and the already legendary Billy Graham (Mark Evans), but also up-and-comers like Jimmy Swaggart (Ian Lassiter), John Fletcher (Raymond J. Lee), Thomas S. Monson (Max Gordon Moore), and Paul and Jan Crouch (Nick Bailey and Allison Guinn); the latter two joining the Praise The Lord Network (PTL) given to the Bakkers by Ted Turner (Andy Taylor).

Bunny Christie’s set resembles a large television studio, with the back wall occasionally coming forward in a fun Hollywood Squares-style set up. This was America figuring out how to use its most useful homegrown tool, the airwaves, and a colorful character like Tammy Faye (costumed here by Katrina Lindsay) is one born for televised fame. The irony being that though her mascara brought people in, her open heart kept them coming. Raised poor by a single mother shamed by the church, the initially shy Tammy Faye finds her individualism and bucking of strict conventions lead to a reciprocal embrace from outcasts, including the LGTBQ+ community to whom she showed remarkable compassion. (That said: Steve Pieters (Charl Brown), the HIV-positive minister she had on the show, was noticeably interviewed via satellite, not on PTL’s soundstage, as the production depicts.)

Once Tammy Faye lands that first solo episode, though, the book abandons the richness of her success story and pivots to the wrongdoings of Jim and his fellow televangelists, who are becoming power hungry in increasingly unsustainable ways. What the other preachers are doing opens a can of words the show cannot contain. Regardless of the outcome of last week’s election, I doubt the myriad scenes icily laying out their long-game to leverage the Moral Majority’s momentum into a theocracy would make for an enjoyable time, especially when played for low-hanging hindsight yuks about the usefulness of young Antonin Scalia. 

Unsure of the tone it must strike, some of Goold’s staging would be considered inadvisable by even the least theatrical church mouse, such as opening with a dramatic costume reveal from hospital gown to … muted church dress, or capping a rousing ensemble number not with fixed jazz hands, but with the Bakkers welcoming Ronald Reagan onto the stage. Never has applause been so spectacularly curtailed. Such a move might work were this a show rigorous in its upending of audience enjoyment. Alas, the preceding song here is “He’s Inside Me,” a painfully unfunny string of double entendres (“He’ll cover you with all the joy he releases”) whose low blows won’t offend a single Christian, except for those with good taste.

And that points to the book’s greatest flaw: we need to believe that Tammy Faye believes, or that at least her belief is worthy of respect, even the institutions around it are reprehensible. Brayben certainly respects it; her big powerhouse numbers, sadly few and far between, are electrifying, especially the act-one closer, “Empty Hands,” which she sells with the magnetic ferocity missing from most of the show. (The underused Cerveris, in a “Hellfire”-like number questioning Falwell’s crooked path to righteousness, briefly becomes its most fascinating figure.) But while the musical finds in her an icon of kitsch and courage, it refuses to take her faith seriously, undermining any possible good that come out of her beliefs by either undercutting it with the other televangelists’ devious politicking or plainly mocking religion with the twerpy glee of a Bill Maher.

Still, the production, so ready to appeal to modern gays, remains beholden to Tammy Faye’s ultimate goodness, whether as a camp object or truly good Christian. Nevermind that these aspects of hers are never truly explored, or that Brayben is rarely given a moment to prove what it is her character was so successfully selling. The world of Tammy Faye is perfectly suited for a musical. Hell, it might require a day-length marathon production, or epic opera, to capture the grand passion play at her story’s heart: challenges of faith, greed, abjection, glory, betrayal and redemption. The history is fascinating, and this show is not altogether unenjoyable, but Tammy Faye’s creators simply haven’t cracked it. It wants to be a camp celebration, cynical dirge, and rousing revival meeting, but sinks Tammy Faye into the destructive whirlpool of her surrounding men in the same way it expects us to believe Bakker herself was innocently caught in their tides. Worse, it denies her of her joy, her core lifesaver – and the one most necessary to make a musical flock rise.

‍Tammy Faye is in performance at the Palace Theatre on West 47th St in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.