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Review: Keep Your Eyes Focused on Katie Brayben in Tammy Faye
November 15, 2024, 12:56.31 am ET

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Photo: Matthew Murphy

By Brian Scott Lipton

“I couldn’t have done it without the gays,” says the television evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (a truly sensational Katie Brayben) as she awaits her heavenly ascent towards the end of “Tammy Faye,” the periodically entertaining musical now at the Palace Theatre.

In many ways, the too-campy remark comes almost out of nowhere, since U.S. homosexuals were actually Bakker’s biggest supporters for the last decade of her life – a time period which the 2 1/2-hour show totally ignores. (Not to mention her children, her second husband, Roe Messner, and a bunch of other inconvenient details.)

But since its composer and lyricist, Elton John and Jake Shears, are openly gay, and its book writer, James Graham, is gender-fluid, there may be a whiff of a truth of those words. Still, here’s the question I have, as a fellow gay man: Why do you want to take credit for such a messy enterprise – one that never fully makes up its mind of what sort of show it wants to be, leaving audiences with a severe case of tonal whiplash.

Directed with his customary inventiveness by (the straight) Rupert Goold – and immeasurably aided by the clever TV-inspired set design of Bunny Christie and the dazzling costumes of Katrina Lindsay -- “Tammy Faye” focuses solely on the nearly 30 years Tammy spent as the wife of fellow televangelist Jim Bakker (a weirdly manic Christian Borle, borrowing much of the schtick he’s used in previous shows), who ultimately bilked millions of Americans out of their hard-earned money through fundraising on the Chrisitan cable network PTL.

Seemingly unaware of how her ultra-lavish lifestyle is being funded, Tammy Faye determinedly “leads with love” and is sincerely devoted to creating a “church” that includes everyone, whether they be AIDS patients (represented here by the underutilized Charl Brown as the Reverend Steve Pieters) or the poor and downtrodden Americans who remind Tammy of her own underprivileged childhood.

To do so, she must triumph over the slew of male chauvinists and charlatans that also participated in the so-called Electric Church, most notably the deeply conservative and misogynistic Reverend Jerry Falwell (an impressively unlikeable Michael Cerveris), whose thirst for power is seemingly unquenchable.

Plus, there’s the almost inexplicable infidelity by Jim with church secretary Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard) that severely damaged – and almost destroyed -- her marriage, and her addiction to pills such as Atavan. (She doesn’t ultimately triumph over her battle with cancer, but she did put up a longer, stronger fight than the musical implies.). Indeed, the musical stops short, just barely, of elevating Tammy Faye to sainthood.

While we don’t have that “honor” in musical theater, we do understand why Brayben won an Olivier Award for the show’s two-month London run in 2022. She commits 110 percent to the role – Southern accent, glitzy wardrobe and all – and sings with a ferocity that makes you worry about her vocal cords. John and Shears give her (and the cast) some truly roof-raising numbers, including “Open Hands/Right Kind of Faith,” “Promised Me” and “If You Come to See My Cry,” all of which elevate the proceedings (which often to fall back to earth as soon as they finish.)

We also understand the show may have been more of a revelation to our friends across the pond who had little or no knowledge of the Bakkers, Falwell or even televangelism. (In fairness, my much-younger All-American theater companion was equally unversed in these subjects.) Here, though, the musical is not so much preaching to the choir, but preaching to the already informed.

To Graham’s credit, there’s only a slight whiff of moral superiority to the script, although you suspect many Brits wondered how “we” Americans fell for this nonsense. More importantly, one can see how members of a nation that were ruled by a woman for over 50 years might not understand how dismissively Falwell and his ilk treated Tammy Faye.

As Tammy mentions, “love” is mentioned 489 times in The Bible, while “hate” is only mentioned 89 times. Whether that ratio is similar when it comes to theatergoers’ response to “Tammy Faye” will determine if the show earns a heavenly reward or a quick demise.

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