It takes more than a holy spirit and revivalist verve to make “Tammy Faye” divinely suited for musical theater.
It would take a creative team knowing what their show wants to be: a campy hoot, a stinging indictment, an anguished melodrama, a witty satire, a revealing biography? The new Broadway musical “Tammy Faye” touches on all of these points of view but lands on none with any sense of confidence, consistency or purpose. It’s as messy as Tammy’s mascara.
This misguided West End import, directed by Rupert Goold with songs by Elton John, starts its story of the teary televangelist with a sense of wicked outrageousness. A white-gowned Tammy (Katie Brayben) is revealed rising into a celestial light to the sounds of a heavenly chorus. But she’s not meeting her maker — she’s meeting her proctologist, where a medical scan reveals colon cancer. The diagnosis propels Tammy into a flashback of a life mixed with faith, love and guilt.
At a megachurch gathering led by Billy Graham (Mark Evans, suitably charismatic), Tammy meets her future husband Jim Bakker (Christian Borle), an itinerant Christian puppeteer. His approach to preaching induces eye-rolls in the Evangelican patriarchy, led by Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris) and including Pat Robertson (Andy Taylor), Jimmy Swaggart (Ian Lassiter) and Marvin Gorman (Max Gordon Moore).
But the positive thinking Tammy encourages in Jim makes the duo an alternative to these “doom and gloomers,” and the pair fashion a ministry that is loving, fun and fabulous. Eventually they convince Ted Turner (Taylor again) to launch PTL (“Praise the Lord”) satellite network, and it’s there where they become stars of biblical proportions.
The millions of followers are soon drawn to Tammy’s emotive personality — as well as the nontraditional and upbeat segments on cooking, fashion and solutions to erectile dysfunction. As the religious rivals become threatened by the Bakkers’ massive satellite congregation, Falwell realizes an opportunity to expand his own power well beyond his ministry.
On the surface, Tammy Faye Bakker would seem to be a natural figure to bring into the world of musical theater where strong-willed, larger-than-life women are gloriously worshipped.
But look closer and find a problematic character of a spiritual figure with an ostentatious lifestyle, drug dependency and a willful obliviousness of her husband’s scam that exploits the poor.
In book writer James Graham’s sweeping-yet-thin storytelling, Tammy’s flaws are softened, glossed over or blithely sung through. Without a significant character to balance the bitter, to probe the psychology, or offer a perspective, it’s hard to have faith in the show. At least “Evita” had Che.
The second act brings the inevitable fall from grace, which is much less fun than the climb. Tammy’s empathetic embrace of a gay pastor with AIDS on her talk show starts the downfall of their empire, along with the revelation of her husband’s sexual encounter with church secretary Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard), and of Jim’s shady scheme in creating the Christian housing development/theme park, Heritage USA.
Like the documentary and Michael Showalter’s film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Graham (“Ink,” “This House”) attempts to place the show in the context of a larger national conservative movement — exploited by Falwell “to put God in the White House.” But the musical never goes beyond the obvious notes of religious hypocrisy, greed, egos and pandering politicians.
The few lifts the show receives are from lighthearted cameos from other figures of power in politics, media and religion: Ronald Reagan (Lassiter), the Archbishop of Canterbury (Lassiter again, whew), Thomas S. Manson, the head of the LDS Church (Moore), Ted Turner (Taylor) and Pope John Paul II (Taylor). Curiously, their personalities and perspectives are never musicalized.
Brayben, who created the role in London, does her best to navigate the wide swings of tone, always giving Tammy heart, soul and a big voice. But she is not helped by John’s score, with lyrics by Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears. The songs are undistinguished and unrooted in character, filled with generic and immediately forgettable power ballads, Christian pop tunes and revivalist floor stompers.
Tony winner Borle works hard to bring some life as Tammy’s troubled husband, but Graham gives him little in which to work other than puppet voices for humor and a meltdown for drama. Cerveris’ rich baritone give his Falwell a deep chill, but he too has little purpose but to pop up, sneer and look foreboding.
Setting the ‘80s period tone with pastels and plenty of pink are Katrina Lindsay’s costumes. Bunny Christie’s set is anchored by a towering wall of television screens, but little else.
In yet another show this season that ends in the afterlife, Tammy finally comes to terms with her all-too-mortal sins and sees the light of a presumably forgiving God. Audiences may not be so charitably inclined.
