Theater review
TAMMY FAYE
Two hours and 35 minutes, with one intermission. At the Palace Theatre, 160 W 47th Street.
The Bitch is Back at the Palace Theatre, the storied house that holds decades of memories for Elton John — both happy and miserable.
Twenty-four years ago, his “Aida,” a Disneyfied take on Verdi, opened there to mixed reviews, but it eventually caught on with tourists.
Then, in 2006, came the singing vampires of “Lestat” (uh-oh!), based on Anne Rice’s novels. Critics were out for blood, and wary audiences didn’t bite.
And on Thursday, the Rocket Man’s latest show, “Tammy Faye,” took its opening night bows, once again, at the Palace.
Unfortunately for Sir Elton, the god-awful musical about flamboyant 1980s televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (later Messner) is a lot more of a “Lestat” than an “Aida.”
Sheesh, the glories of his “Billy Elliot” seem so long ago, Billy probably goes by William now.
“Tammy Faye,” which I also found lacking when it premiered in 2022 at the tiny Almeida Theatre in London, vanishes in a much bigger Broadway house. Poof!
Two years ago, the sinfully long show still included many of John’s same Saltine-cracker songs that are forgotten the moment the audience applauds and a book that’s seemingly allergic to insight and fleshed-out humans. But boring, it was not.
Perhaps our sustained interest was due to the close proximity to the actors. The Almedia seats 350, while the Palace has room for 1,600. The energy was definitely helped along by the showbiz effervescence of Andrew Rannells. More on that later.
Gobbled up in New York, the musical, with a score by John, lyrics by the Scissor Sisters’ Jakes Shears and a book by James Graham (“Ink”), has gotten significantly worse.
Directed by Rupert Goold (“Patriots”), usually the UK’s go-to guy for sleek and mechanical stagings, “Tammy Faye” is neither. Rather, it’s amateurish with lots of dead air and little focus.
Much like the Jessica Chastain film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” John’s musical is a rudimentary “and then this happened” biography explaining how Tammy (Katie Brayben) and her husband Jim Bakker (Christian Borle) went from small-town obscurity to bringing smiles and puppets to the fire-and-brimstone world of TV preachers with their enormous PTL (Praise the Lord) Network.
They also made loads of cash, led lavish lifestyles off-camera and were ultimately taken down after Jim was convicted of committing fraud.
Team “Tammy” can’t figure out how to build likable and compelling characters who also do unquestionably bad things. Tammy Faye’s drug addiction, Jim’s affairs and their company’s bilking their followers are rushed. So, the show leans hard on broad one-liners instead.
The groaner jokes start right away in the opening scene in a proctologist’s office, where Tammy learns she has colon cancer and makes crude sex jokes to a gay doctor.
No comment.
No laughs, for that matter. Most of the bits are met with the same hungover silence you’d find in a Catholic church on a Tuesday.
Brayben and Borle have a shared dourness, as well, so they don’t fully come to life until the second half when Tammy and Jim’s ritzy existences crumble as the press delves into their funny finances.
Rannells played Jim back in the UK, and his zest is missed. Jim was not the performer Tammy was, granted, and he struggled on camera. But actors in a musical should not be awkward to watch, and Borle is.
Much of “Tammy Faye” is uncomfortable. Lynne Page’s ‘80s grab-bag choreography is me at a wedding.
Staging aside, narratively the whole point of the Bakkers is largely missed. Go in cold, and you’ll leave with no idea about how famous Jim and Tammy were or why you’ve just sat through a musical about them.
Where Graham and Shears try to force in some 2024 depth is an overwrought thesis on how television evangelicals impacted American politics and forged the path of the modern-day Republican Party.
Exemplifying that effort, as pastor Jerry Falwell — written to be so absurdly villainous that Elton must’ve confused him for Scar — Michael Cerveris sings, “I’ve been sent by my creator to make my country greater.”
Americans on both sides of the political divide can at least agree on this: Nobody wants to hear that lyric in a musical.
Cerveris can do no wrong, in my book. But he’s been saddled with a lead balloon. The entire talented cast has.
The malleable ensemble inhabits a Rolodex of relevant figures of the time: Hustler founder Larry Flynt, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, among others.
If Tammy and Jim are flat, the rest are stick figures.
At one point, the couple’s billionaire boss Ted Turner shouts, “Her mascara budget is bigger than my mortgage!”
And the religious types are ripped out of a comic strip. Every so often Pope John Paul II (Andy Taylor), the Archbishop of Canterbury (Ian Lassiter) and Mormon leader Thomas Monson (Max Gordon Moore) will pop out from Bunny Christie’s “Hollywood Squares” set to witlessly whine about these small-screen rabble-rousers. A skit within a skit.
But it all comes down to Tammy.
Brayben gets two splashy numbers: “Empty Hands,” an emotional ballad after Tammy learns about Jim’s affair with Jessica Hahn, and “If You Came To See My Cry,” her final grasp at love after being ostracized by the world.
The British actress sings them capably, even though John’s music comes short of powerful, and her feeling is genuine. She knows how to do crushed.
However, the empty scenes and workman-like songs in the lead-up do not build to these eruptions, momentarily effective though they are. It’s dull then loud, like unexpected airplane turbulence.
Goold has the actors break the fourth wall a bunch throughout. Actors make entrances through the center aisle, and the audience is annoyingly encouraged to applaud over and over during their overplayed TV tapings.
At the start of Act Two, Tammy has the ticket-buyers at the Palace say, “I deserve to be here!”
As penance for our sins?
