Broadway Reviews Theatre Review by Howard Miller - November 14, 2024 Tammy Faye. Music by Elton John. Lyrics by Jake Shears. Book by James Graham. Directed by Rupert Goold. Music supervision, arrangements, and additional music by Tom Deering. Choreography by Lynne Page. Scenic design by Bunny Christie. Costume design by Katrina Lindsay. Lighting design by Neil Austin. Video design by Finn Ross. Sound design by Nick Lidster for Autograph. Hair, wig, and make-up design by Luc Verschueren for Campbell Young Associates. Associate director Sara Aniqah Malik. Associate choreographer Thomas Herron. Orchestrations by Mark Dickman and Tom Deering. Music director Chris Fenwick. Music coordinator Michael Aarons. Electronic music designer Billy Jay Stein and Hiro Iida, Strange Cranium. Resident director Deanna Weiner. Dialect coach Kate Wilson.
On the face of it, Tammy Faye would seem to be a celebration of the life of the late superstar televangelist Tammy Faye Messner, more famously known as Tammy Faye Bakker, using the surname of her first husband and convicted fraudster Jim Bakker. In this capacity, the spotlight shines most brightly on the title character, played by Katie Brayben, who won a best actress Olivier Award last year for the London production of the show, with music written by Elton John, lyrics by Jake Shears, and book by James Graham. The biggest reward is decidedly the performance by Brayben. She sings up a storm (oh, those soaring power numbers!) and works mightily to convey the sort of charisma that made Tammy Faye Bakker a ginormously popular and successful leader in the wonderful world of televangelism for more than ten years between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. It all came crashing down when her husband and business partner (portrayed here by Christian Borle, appearing hamstrung by the constraints of the role) was arrested in connection with the dubious fundraising by their Christian television program, the PTL ("Praise the Lord") Club, and their theme park/residential complex, Heritage USA. The rise and fall of the Bakkers is presented in a scattershot fashion as the couple wends their way from hosting a local televised Christian-themed children's puppet show to being offered a major program of their own by Ted Turner (played by Andy Taylor, who also takes on the roles of Pat Robertson and Pope John Paul II, an interesting trinity to be sure). That's the shortcut version that Tammy Faye offers up, though if you take a quick dip into Wikipedia, you'll see that the journey to PTL fame and fortune (gained and squandered) had many stops along the way. But this all begs a couple of questions. Why celebrate the Ativan-popping, mascara-loving Tammy Faye in the first place? Aside from her obvious crowd-pleasing big-heartedness (there is one short scene of her hugging a gay pastor who has AIDS), she was quite a profligate spender of the money that poured into the Bakkers' ventures on the backs of their viewers, many of whom were struggling to make ends meet. And how did she avoid being implicated with Jim Bakker (whose messy sexual relationship with Jessica Hahn, played by Alana Pollard, is addressed in the same shorthand way), when a big hush money payoff came from those same funds? Tammy Faye comes off as a pretty sharp businesswoman, so did she really not know about the financial shenanigans? You'll not find out from this show.
Much of the show plays out before a display that looks like one side of an oversized Rubik's Cube or TV's "Hollywood Squares" or "Laugh-In" set, with windows that periodically open to reveal someone's head as they throw out a few lines. The potential for satire is all over the place, but it is either way too subtle or it never was considered in the first place. Elton John certainly knows the ingredients that are needed for a big musical, including incorporating rousing numbers for the end of Act I, the 11:00 number, and the closing song that comes just ahead of the confetti that drops on those seated in the first few rows of the orchestra section. He has also written a big splashy piece called "God's House/Heritage USA" that is so long that it is divided into two sections, with big dance moves by choreographer Lynne Page. But none of the songs amount to much, all style over substance. There is a squandered opportunity for (possibly) a Monty Python-style number on a couple of occasions when Pope John Paul II, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Latter-Day Saints president Thomas Monson (Max Gordon Moore, who also plays a proctologist and Marvin Gorman, another rival and shamed televangelist) all get together on an emergency phone call about what's going on with the rise of bigtime evangelical Christianity. Otherwise, their presence seems to be random and pointless. It's impossible to know what has happened on the road to Broadway for Tammy Faye, or what director Rupert Goold has in mind. But there seems to be no one point of view being conveyed here, a knotty problem that makes for a series of interesting moments, but a less satisfying whole. Or maybe our times are too cynical to be caught up in a story that came and went more than four decades ago. We have enough shenanigans and unscrupulous leaders to deal with in the here and now P.S. Jim Bakker is no longer in prison. He remains alive and in his 80s, busily preaching about the Second Coming and hustling emergency survival products. Now there's an idea for a musical in case anyone is interested.
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