You wake up Sunday morning, and instead of turning on a favorite news program, you punch in the wrong numbers to get one of those dreadful Evangelist megachurch shows. Even worse, when you try to switch channels, the remote control fails. You’re stuck watching those Christian grifters and con artists for the next 2.5 hours.
That ghastly waking nightmare will give you some idea of what it’s like to sit through the new musical “Tammy Faye,” which opened Thursday at the Palace Theatre after its world premiere last year in London. Just as TV Evangelists suck up to their right-wing audience, the makers of “Tammy Faye” pander to feminists and “the gays.” Jake Shears’ puerile lyrics to Elton John’s weak country-Western tunes encourage women to take control of their life by using those “credit cards.” Much worse and more pervasive are the many ways James Graham’s book turns the title character into a gay icon somewhere to the left of Lady Gaga. We’re expected to find Tammy Faye sympathetic, even though she begs for money from poor people so she can look like a hideously dressed drag queen. Costumes are by Katrina Lindsay; Luc Verschueren designed the hair, wigs and make-up.
Once upon a time, the real Tammy Faye Baker hugged a man who was HIV-positive, and this episode on her TV show has led Graham to create a Broadway first: in the show’s first scene, a proctologist examines the title character, played by Katie Brayben. Since Tammy Faye has been beatified by “the gays” for not spitting on them like everybody else in the Evangelical community, this modicum of civility allows her to level jokes about anal sex at the butt doctor, who’s gay.
What “Tammy Faye” completely misses is the derision “the gays” have for certain famous and ridiculously overdressed women like Tammy Faye Baker. They don’t worship these women, they laugh at them.
Beyond that major gaffe, there’s a problem with stage musicals about TV shows. Even “Hairspray” suffers from it, since we’re being asked to watch a TV program while sitting in a theater. Because so much of “Tammy Faye” takes place on the set of “The PTL Club,” the thought can’t be avoided, “Why didn’t I just stay home and watch something on Hulu instead?”
Director Rupert Goold doubles down on this TV-show-within-a-stage-musical concept by having Bunny Christie’s set resemble that of “Hollywood Squares,” complete with little windows that open to feature talking and singing heads. When the actors actually manage to escape those squares on a monolithic wall, they have to watch their every step. Christie has bugged the stage with all sorts of huge TV-set-like boxes that rise up from the bowels of the stage so Tammy Faye and others can use these pedestals to make their confessions or damn “the gays.”
Goold begins Act 2 just the way Jamie Lloyd begins Act 2 of “Sunset Blvd.” Brayben is filmed sitting backstage getting ready for her entrance, singing yet another one of Elton John’s sanctimonious female empowerment ballads. Brayben sounds a little like Dolly Parton on an off night, and in the second act when she’s high on pills, this scam artist resembles Lucille Ball in the Vitameatavegin episode of “I Love Lucy.”
Tammy Faye is the charismatic one. Her husband, Jim Baker, is the TV klutz, and playing him, Christian Borle gets stuck being a klutz with bad timing. Borle is very successful at not getting laughs in this show.
What’s downright risible is Lynne Page’s choreography for all the staged TV commercials, which are staged exactly like the other big production numbers.
Downright reprehensible is the way in which “Tammy Faye” slut-shames Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard). To refresh your memory, Hahn was the young acolyte whom Jim Baker deflowered and then she cashed in on her notoriety. Pollard begins the show as if dressed by Laura Ashley on a budget and ends it wearing some black leather bondage outfit from the local sex shop.
Playing the villainous Jerry Falwell, Michael Cerveris isn’t nearly quick enough in plotting Tammy Faye and Jim Baker’s demise.
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