If you keep in mind Tammy Faye Bakker in any respect from the height of her ’80s televangelical fame, you’ll more than likely keep in mind the scandals, the mascara, the tarantula-leg eyelashes, the massive, massive hair, the prescribed drugs and possibly the groundbreaking on-air interview she did with AIDS affected person Steven Pieters, all at a time when Evangelical Christians weren’t well-known for any of the above.
Even should you don’t keep in mind any of these particulars, you continue to may simply have a imprecise feeling of over-the-top enjoyable related along with her, a self-knowing clownishness when the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jerry Falwells of her world leaned decidedly towards the self-important selection.
By all rights, Tammy Faye – she dropped the Bakker after divorcing her dishonest, probably homosexual husband and associate within the God enterprise Jim Bakker – ought to make for a scrumptious stage musical, possibly one thing alongside the traces of Titanique or a few of the sillier moments of the in any other case tedious Diana: The Musical.
Tammy Faye, that musical is just not. Opening tonight at Broadway‘s Palace Theater, with a guide by James Graham, lyrics by Jake Shears and music by Elton John, Tammy Faye is simply barely extra enjoyable than church on a scorching July day. All involved appear completely decided to rework the city madcap into a good, saintly and quite uninteresting church-lady-next-door.
Directed with occasional aptitude by Rupert Goold, Tammy Faye stars Katie Brayben, a wonderfully nice British actress who grasps Tammy Faye’s Minnesota accent with extra aplomb than she grasps the preacher’s outré panache. This Tammy Faye comes throughout extra because the considerably unconventional neighbor you recall so fondly out of your childhood, and never because the boundary-breaking eccentric who singlehandedly upended the stodgy world of Christian evangelism through the Reagan Era.
On a set (designed by Bunny Christie) dominated by a financial institution of TV screens that operate as studio displays, Laugh-in Joke Wall pop-outs (look, there’s the Pope!), and, when mixed into one display screen, huge facial close-ups, Tammy Faye chronicles the rise and fall and spiritual-rise once more of its title character. Born Tamara Faye LaValley, Tammy casts her private and enterprise lot within the Nineteen Seventies with a younger, bold and altogether corny touring preacher (he makes use of Muppet-like puppets in his sermons).
Katie Brayben and Christian Borle
Matthew Murphy
When the couple catches the attention of a younger cable exec named Ted Turner, the Bakkers quickly discover themselves on the bottom flooring of each an industry, a revolution and one other in America’s periodic non secular awakenings. Unlike their dour, hearth and brimstone friends Falwell and Swaggart, the Bakkers appear extra just like the fun-news hosts of a morning cooking and crafts present. And they catch on, particularly Tammy Faye, who steals the highlight from her extra button-down husband merely by connecting with their TV viewers by means of her vulnerability and self-deprecating humor. Not to say a glance that, we’re instructed however by no means actually proven right here, all however screams she’s about to sock it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.
The couple’s success riles up their extra staid evangelical counterparts, who quickly scheme to deliver the duo down by any means crucial. 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 quickly take a spot alongside Donna Rice as precursors to the type of maligned scandal-bait perfected just a few years later by Monica Lewinsky.
So there’s the opening prayer. You don’t should have been round means again when to determine the place Tammy Faye is headed: Downfall, divorce, jail for Jim, and a type of befuddled “how did I get right here?” final act for Tammy Faye, who the musical does its greatest to painting as a naif whose solely crime is a style for good garments, good cosmetics and plenty and plenty of drugs. If she by no means actually questions simply the place all that cash is coming from – i.e., these rubes on the market she professes to like a lot – effectively, so be it. Doesn’t Jim deal with all that boring finance stuff anyway?
With a plot as skinny because the paper of a Bible web page, Tammy Faye‘s solely hope for salvation would have been some kooky singing and dancing, and but the present falls brief right here too. The John-Shears songs are typically a bland mix of pop and gospel, with out the goofy enjoyable of the previous or rousing emotion of the latter. Like Lynne Page’s uninvolving choreography, the songs typically can’t determine whether or not they wish to mimic the musical numbers of ’80s selection exhibits or mock them, and so does neither notably effectively.
Michael Cerveris and the solid of ‘Tammy Faye’
Michael Murphy
The solid principally does its greatest to deliver some vigor to the proceedings, although, like Brayben within the title position, most appear to be reined in (by Goold?) from full-on outlandishness, and extra’s the pity. Christian Borle, one of many stage’s most reliably entertaining actors, turns in a two-note Jim Bakker (doofus right here, crybaby there), whereas Michael Cerveris makes for a suitably villainous Jerry Falwell. But fact be instructed, is anybody actually within the temper for a villainous, politically bold Jerry Falwell as of late?
And possibly that, ultimately, is the issue with Tammy Faye. The dangerous guys, with their cynical tackle faith and right-wing politics, are all too dangerous (credibly so) whereas our good woman is simply not dangerous sufficient. When she lastly meets her maker, would it not have been an excessive amount of to hope that the stage fog will clear to disclose a well-stocked Sephora? Give these 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 (together with intermission)
Content Source: deadline.com