Even in the afterlife, Tammy Faye is misunderstood

Who wasn’t excited when the Broadway transfer of the hit West End musical Tammy Faye was announced? Our favorite bigger-than-life televangelist, a score by Elton John and Jake Shears, and gay cutie Andrew Rannells as Jim Bakker promised to baptize the newly renovated Palace Theatre? Praise the Lord! 

After mediocre reviews, an early closing seemed imminent, but few thought its downfall would shutter the show on December 8, after only 24 previews and 29 performances. But just like the couple’s PTL Network, Broadway is a business, and the show’s $22 million capitalization couldn’t compete with “disastrous” box office performance. Tammy Faye fans weren’t happy.

Sending so much love to the cast and crew of ‘Tammy Faye’. I personally thought this show wasn’t as bad as the reviews made it out to be. Such a dedicated cast and a strong performance by Katie Brayben. #TammyFaye #Broadway #Theatre #TheaterBSKY

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— Robby Lerman (@rbrett.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 4:04 PM

In some ways, it’s a befitting last chapter to Tammy Faye’s enduring and complicated legacy. Her rise to fame (alongside a cheating husband and a web of power-hungry preachers hoping to cash in on America’s Pentecostal pocketbooks) is inherently dramatic. 

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The 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye earned a Grand Jury prize nomination at Sundance, and the 2021 biopic scored an Oscar for Jessica Chastain’s performance. But Broadway, as they say in Oz, is a horse of a different color. Close-ups of Tammy Faye’s legendary eyes grace the playbill and a pre-show scrim, but the attempt to veer away from the disgraced televangelist’s default emotion runs thin, despite a captivating Katie Brayben in the title role singing in the musical’s final moments, “If you came to see me cry you might as well go home tonight.” 

The challenge with any biomusical (currently exhibited elsewhere on Broadway in A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical) is delicately balancing character flaws while still creating conflict and engaging the audience. Bookended by Tammy Faye’s assent to heaven, we witness Tammy Faye evolve from a charming Midwestern bible college student to a media juggernaut. Therein lies the rub. 

On the one hand, we’re asked to revel in Tammy Faye’s success in shattering the evangelical glass ceiling as she leverages a heart-on-your-sleeve sensibility to gain the trust — and money — of everyday worshipers seeking spiritual guidance and a sense of hope. Simultaneously, she feigns ignorance of PTL’s financial structure, which includes hefty salaries, personal use of ministry funds, and a luxurious lifestyle. That’s a hard Ativan to swallow.

Various truths can exist simultaneously, and while the Bakker’s unscrupulous business sensibility, along with Jim Bakker’s (a recast gloomy Christian Borle) encounter with Jessica Hahn and the hush money that followed, Tammy Faye practiced what she preached, famously interviewing AIDS patient Steve Pieterson in 1985. The musical takes liberties, staging what was originally a satellite interview as an in-person conversation and ending with a weepy hug, further dispelling the misinformation about the spread of HIV. 

Tammy Faye’s foes — preacher goons led by Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris) — ring familiar as we look at the ethnocentrism coming down the pipeline with our president-elect. And while the rabid struggle for power and the arguably sweet soul caught in the crossfire might make for an amusing evening at the theater across the pond, timing is everything, and Broadway audiences aren’t buying. 

Instead, feel-good musicals like Maybe Happy Ending, sharply written satires like Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary!, and reimagined classics showcasing Gen Z stars like Romeo + Juliet, co-starring Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler are topping the box office. Even Sunset Boulevard is playing to nearly sold-out houses despite its leading lady Nicole Scherzinger’s MAGA-tinged social media mishap.

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What soars or stumbles on Broadway remains an enigma. When Jim finds out Tammy has invited a homosexual to the show, he accuses her of being too loud. “I have to be!” she responds. “ ‘Love’ struggles to be loud, sometimes, Jim. Compared to what they’re preaching. And if they win, where will our people go then?”

In the case of Broadway, they’ll flock to any number of new shows rolling into town, including a revival of Gypsy with Audra McDonald and directed by George C. Wolfe, Idina Menzel’s star turn in Redwood, or Jinkx Monsson in Pirate! A Penzance Musical. As for Tammy Faye, a final reach for the spotlight has dimmed as we ask ourselves, if a tear falls down Tammy Faye’s cheek and no one is around to see it, did it ever really happen?♦

Featured image: Katie Brayben as Tammy Faye Bakker in Tammy Faye.

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Tammy Faye plays on Broadway at the Palace Theatre through December 8. Tickets are available here.

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