Theater assessment
TAMMY FAYE
Two hours and 35 minutes, with one intermission. On the Palace Theatre, 160 W forty seventh Road.
The Bitch is Again on the Palace Theatre, the storied home that holds a long time of reminiscences for Elton John — each joyful and depressing.
Twenty-four years in the past, his “Aida,” a Disneyfied tackle Verdi, opened there to combined critiques, however it will definitely caught on with vacationers.
Then, in 2006, got here the singing vampires of “Lestat” (uh-oh!), based mostly on Anne Rice’s novels. Critics had been out for blood, and cautious audiences didn’t chunk.
And on Thursday, the Rocket Man’s newest present, “Tammy Faye,” took its opening evening bows, as soon as once more, on the Palace.
Sadly for Sir Elton, the god-awful musical about flamboyant Nineteen Eighties televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (later Messner) is much more of a “Lestat” than an “Aida.”
Sheesh, the glories of his “Billy Elliot” appear so way back, Billy in all probability goes by William now.
“Tammy Faye,” which I additionally discovered missing when it premiered in 2022 on the tiny Almeida Theatre in London, vanishes in a a lot greater Broadway home. Poof!
Two years in the past, the sinfully lengthy present nonetheless included lots of John’s identical Saltine-cracker songs which can be forgotten the second the viewers applauds and a e-book that’s seemingly allergic to perception and fleshed-out people. However boring, it was not.
Maybe our sustained curiosity was as a result of shut proximity to the actors. The Almedia seats 350, whereas the Palace has room for 1,600. The vitality was positively helped alongside by the showbiz effervescence of Andrew Rannells. Extra on that later.
Wolfed up in New York, the musical, with a rating by John, lyrics by the Scissor Sisters’ Jakes Shears and a e-book by James Graham (“Ink”), has gotten considerably worse.
Directed by Rupert Goold (“Patriots”), normally the UK’s go-to man for glossy and mechanical stagings, “Tammy Faye” is neither. Reasonably, it’s amateurish with numerous lifeless air and little focus.
Very like the Jessica Chastain movie “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 monumental PTL (Reward the Lord) Community.
In addition they made a great deal of money, led lavish life off-camera and had been finally taken down after Jim was convicted of committing fraud.
Crew “Tammy” can’t determine methods to construct likable and compelling characters who additionally do unquestionably unhealthy issues. Tammy Faye’s drug dependancy, Jim’s affairs and their firm’s bilking their followers are rushed. So, the present leans onerous on broad one-liners as a substitute.
The groaner jokes begin immediately within the opening scene in a proctologist’s workplace, the place Tammy learns she has colon most cancers and makes crude intercourse jokes to a homosexual physician.
No remark.
No laughs, for that matter. Many of the bits are met with the identical hungover silence you’d discover in a Catholic church on a Tuesday.
Brayben and Borle have a shared dourness, as effectively, so that they don’t absolutely come to life till the second half when Tammy and Jim’s ritzy existences crumble because the press delves into their humorous funds.
Rannells performed Jim again within the UK, and his zest is missed. Jim was not the performer Tammy was, granted, and he struggled on digicam. However actors in a musical shouldn’t be awkward to look at, and Borle is.
A lot of “Tammy Faye” is uncomfortable. Lynne Web page’s ‘80s grab-bag choreography is me at a marriage.
Staging apart, narratively the entire level of the Bakkers is basically missed. Go in chilly, and also you’ll depart with no thought about how well-known Jim and Tammy had been or why you’ve simply sat by means of a musical about them.
The place Graham and Shears attempt to pressure in some 2024 depth is an overwrought thesis on how tv evangelicals impacted American politics and solid the trail of the modern-day Republican Occasion.
Exemplifying that effort, as pastor Jerry Falwell — written to be so absurdly villainous that Elton should’ve confused him for Scar — Michael Cerveris sings, “I’ve been sent by my creator to make my country greater.”
Individuals on each side of the political divide can no less than agree on this: No person desires to listen to that lyric in a musical.
Cerveris can do no fallacious, in my e-book. However he’s been saddled with a lead balloon. The complete gifted solid has.
The malleable ensemble inhabits a Rolodex of related figures of the time: Hustler founder Larry Flynt, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, amongst others.
If Tammy and Jim are flat, the remainder are stick figures.
At one level, the couple’s billionaire boss Ted Turner shouts, “Her mascara budget is bigger than my mortgage!”
And the spiritual varieties are ripped out of a comic book strip. Every now and then Pope John Paul II (Andy Taylor), the Archbishop of Canterbury (Ian Lassiter) and Mormon chief Thomas Monson (Max Gordon Moore) will come out from Bunny Christie’s “Hollywood Squares” set to witlessly whine about these small-screen rabble-rousers. A skit inside a skit.
However it all comes right down to Tammy.
Brayben will get 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 closing grasp at love after being ostracized by the world.
The British actress sings them capably, despite the fact that John’s music comes wanting highly effective, and her feeling is real. She is aware of methods to do crushed.
Nevertheless, the empty scenes and workman-like songs within the lead-up don’t construct to those eruptions, momentarily efficient although they’re. It’s uninteresting then loud, like surprising airplane turbulence.
Goold has the actors break the fourth wall a bunch all through. Actors make entrances by means of the middle aisle, and the viewers is annoyingly inspired to applaud time and again throughout their overplayed TV tapings.
Firstly of Act Two, Tammy has the ticket-buyers on the Palace say, “I deserve to be here!”
As penance for our sins?
