NEW YORK (RNS) — On a weeknight just half a block from Times Square, theatergoers can watch as Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell Sr. grips his mic for his big solo number, Billy Graham spins into a dance break and Pentecostal televangelist Tammy Faye, in her signature statement makeup, belts an 11 o’clock number.
“Is this a fever dream?” a casual viewer might ask.
Close: It’s a Broadway musical.
On Thursday (Nov. 14), “Tammy Faye: A New Broadway Musical” opened at the Palace Theater, and it’s every bit as glitzy and sentimental as you’d hope for in a show about Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker), the charismatic evangelist-turned-gay icon.
With a soaring score from the legendary Elton John, the show casts Falwell and his ilk as villains, Jim Bakker as an insecure, miscreant husband and Tammy as the sparkly, open-hearted heroine. The result is a wildly entertaining, if cursory, exploration of the events surrounding the Bakkers’ rise and fall, and an effective celebration of Tammy Faye’s love-filled legacy and outreach to the gay community.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Tammy Faye and her then-husband, Jim Bakker, built an evangelical empire that included their own satellite network, a Christian theme park and a television show called “Praise the Lord” or “PTL” that, at its height, was viewed in over 14 million homes. Despite the couple’s public downfall (caused in part by financial scandals, Tammy Faye’s rumored drug addiction and allegations of sexual abuse against Jim Bakker), the Bakkers — and Tammy Faye in particular, who died from cancer in 2007 — are experiencing something of a pop culture revival, thanks to the 2021 film starring Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain.
In the musical retelling, Broadway newcomer Katie Brayben, fresh from winning a 2023 Olivier Award for her portrayal of Tammy Faye in the West End iteration of the show, is electric in the title role. Aided by Jake Shears’ precise lyrics, Brayben is convincing, never corny, and through songs like “Empty Hands,” the audience quickly trusts that Tammy Faye’s desire to spread the gospel is earnest.
A preview performance of “Tammy Faye: A New Broadway Musical” at the Palace Theater, Oct. 22, 2024, in New York City. The show opened to the public on Nov. 14. (RNS photo/Kathryn Post)
But from the moment two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle bounds onstage with puppets in hand, it’s clear the show isn’t afraid to poke fun. While the recent bioflick occasionally depicted Jim Bakker as sympathetic, the musical treats the disgraced televangelist as a farcical figure who delivers eye-rolling punch lines with gusto. Perhaps intentionally, Borle’s Bakker is a foil to Tammy Faye’s sincerity and vulnerability, and as his role shifts from comic relief to antagonist, his jealousy and indiscretions pave the way for the undoing of “PTL.”
The show’s portrayal of other religious leaders also makes clear who the audience is supposed to root for. Billy Graham is a smiley, foot-stomping revivalist who inspires Tammy Faye, while Jerry Falwell Sr., Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts are stodgy, power-hungry traitors whose lines are replete with heavy-handed Donald Trump references —“I’ve been called by my creator to make my country greater,” Falwell sings in “Satellite of God”— that earn compulsory guffaws.
In 2022, ahead of the musical’s West End debut, director Rupert Goold told The Guardian that the show “has something politically to say now,” particularly given what he described as religiously motivated “policing of civil liberties and people’s bodies.”
“We’re in a really interesting time regarding faith and belief, with the repealing of Roe v Wade in various [US] states and the return of the idea of faith-based morality or legislation,” he said. While the show’s characterization of 20th-century fundamentalists easily betrays the political leanings of the show’s creators, perhaps a satirical approach is necessary for a musical covering 20 years of religious history in two and a half hours.
The show’s satire is most apparent in the number “He’s Inside Me,” a “Book of Mormon”-coded romp filled with less-than-clever double entendres. The production also features a handful of gags — think a flamboyant Jesus sassily rolling away a giant beach ball to rise from the grave — that feel excessive.
Though these gimmicks add some levity, the show is at its most effective when it’s sincere. It confronts the topic of abuse surprisingly well, succinctly capturing the power dynamics at play when a pastor is also a perpetrator. As Jessica Hahn, a church secretary who alleged Jim Bakker raped her, says in the show: “How do you say no to God?” In one of the most convicting numbers, “Promised Me,” those harmed by the Bakkers’ prosperity gospel messages and Jim Bakkers’ abusive behavior hold the celebrities to account, passing around the mic to expose how they were wronged.
The audience is seated for a preview performance of “Tammy Faye: A New Broadway Musical” at the Palace Theater, Oct. 22, 2024, in New York City. (RNS photo/Kathryn Post)
Still, even when Tammy Faye apologizes to viewers alongside her husband in “The Right Kind of Faith,” it’s not clear exactly what she’s apologizing for. Against the show’s other hyper-flawed characters, Tammy Faye has few faults besides her spending and apparent drug addiction, which are only hinted at onstage. Viewers are left wondering whether she ever fully owned up to the role she played in exploiting PTL’s investors.
What the show makes unambiguous, though, is Tammy Faye’s designation as LGBTQ champion. The musical spotlights her groundbreaking 1985 interview with minister and AIDS activist Steve Pieters, whose embrace of his gay identity was verboten in evangelical circles at the time. And at the end of the show, it’s her solidarity with “the gays” and messages about unconditional love that are front and center.
“She was completely outlawed and banished, and she fought through that because of her goodness and kindness and her belief and her faith,” Elton John, a gay icon in his own right, told The Associated Press.
In a musical that will be known more for its dazzling vocals and enthralling musical numbers than its historical precision, nuance is perhaps most apparent in the choice of Tammy Faye as subject in the first place. In an age of either/or, a musical about a conservative evangelical known for her faith as much as her LGBTQ advocacy is as refreshing and provocative today as Tammy Faye was in her heyday.
“What she represented even 30 or 40 years ago was a desire to reach across those divides and nothing about her faith contradicted that,” James Graham, the show’s playwright, told The Associated Press in mid-October. “I think what she represents — that goodness and decency — is something we all, particularly in this election year, need to remind ourselves.”
Signs for “Tammy Faye: A New Broadway Musical” at the Palace Theater in New York City. (RNS photo/Kathryn Post)
Richa Karmarkar contributed to this report.
