“If only love.” It’s a simple sentiment that serves as the foundation for one of the country’s biggest and most impactful Christian television programs in Broadway’s newest musical, Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye explores the rise and fall of televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker as they build a ministry broadcast via satellite nationwide.
The book by Olivier Award-winning playwright James Graham (Ink, Finding Neverland, This House) is brought to life with an Elton John score and lyrics by Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. It is directed by Olivier Award winner Rupert Goold (Ink, King Charles II, Judy) in the newly renovated Palace Theater.
Katie Brayben (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, King Charles II, American Psycho) reprises her Olivier Award-winning role as Tammy, making her Broadway debut alongside Tony winners Christian Borle (Legally Blonde, Something Rotten!, Some Like it Hot) as Jim Bakker and Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd, Assassins, The Gilded Age) as pastor and conservative political activist Jerry Falwell.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Tammy Faye growing up,” Shears told Newsweek. “I just adored her. I think there’s something about her that always reminded me of my own mom.”
He said Tammy had a “non-judgmental” and “innocent nature” about her, adding, “I always loved what she stood for.”
Shears and John are long-time friends and collaborators who discussed writing a Christian televangelism musical for over a decade.After years of writing and workshops, Tammy Faye ran from October to December 2022 at the Almeida Theater in London. The show was nominated for four Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical, and won two.
This musical follows Tammy as she and her husband become rising stars in Christian televangelism from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. Through her genuine spirit and enduring faith, Tammy emerges from under her husband’s shadow to blossom into a TV icon amid heartbreak and scandal.
Tammy, who later married Roe Messner after divorcing Jim in 1992, was a larger-than-life personality known for her big hair, fake eyelashes and her advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community during the height of the AIDS epidemic. At the peak of their popularity, however, Jim and Tammy were forced off the air following Jim’s felony fraud convictions and alleged sexual misconduct.
Brayben told Newsweek that Tammy and Jim were the original reality TV personalities, living their whole lives on camera and building a kinship with their audience.
“I loved how open she was—she’s really in the moment,” Brayben said of Tammy. “She’s very reactive, so she’s always on the bubble of a laugh or the edge of a cry. I love how vulnerable she is, and you can see it when she’s interviewing other people [and] when she’s being interviewed, she’s incredibly drawn to people.”
The show features big musical numbers highlighting Tammy and Jim’s ability to connect with their audience. Tammy was a singer and performer, releasing several Christian albums throughout her career.
“[Tammy] was someone who expressed herself through her voice,” Brayben said. “So it feels absolutely right to me that she should express her moments of joy and pain and confusion and loss through song.”
At times, the audience in the Palace Theater feels like they are watching Tammy on the TV in their living room (with 1,700 of their closest friends) and then witnessing a live performance in the PTL studio. Whether the actors are standing in a TV frame on center stage or being broadcast on the wall of television screens behind them, the audience feels they can reach their hands out and be one with Tammy. There is even a running theme that Tammy is poised to be a new and unlikely profit in the Christian world.
Tammy’s emotion, openness, talent, and charisma make her the perfect subject for a Broadway musical. Her character, however, never devolves into a caricature.
Brayben said she wants audiences to understand Tammy better and perhaps walk out of the theater with a different perspective on his complex, multifaceted person who was more than her over-the-top makeup and costumes.
“I’m certainly not doing an impression of Tammy Faye, but I hope people see her heart and her joy, her expression of vulnerability [and] her ability to go from tears to joy,” she said.
The Bakkers’ version of Christianity may have gained them fans, but it also made some enemies within televangelism.
Director Rupert Goold told Newsweek that Michael Cerveris brings a “gravitas and integrity” to the villainous Reverend Jerry Falwell—a dark, looming cloud over Tammy’s vibrant light.
In the show, Falwell and other conservative preachers take offense to the Bakkers’ more secular message and set out to dismantle their ministry while advancing their version of traditional values up to the White House.
Audiences see how religious leaders planted the seeds to creep back into politics in the 1980s and how, in many ways, they succeeded.
With only a few days until the U.S. presidential election, the creative team is aware of the challenge that striking the right tone for the American audience brings.
“I think the fact that we are making a show in the run towards our elections really sharpens the sense of how [the musical] is looking at the origins of the culture wars,” Goold said. “It looks at how Christianity in America comes into politics and has shaped everything from the judiciary to education.”
The show’s creators, however, don’t want it to be didactic. They said this is an uplifting, joyful show, regardless of the audience’s faith or politics.
The show satirizes some elements of televangelism with biting humor but depicts Tammy as a complicated woman who encouraged others to follow her mission to lead with love.
In her 11 o’clock number, “If You Came to See Me Cry,” Tammy reflects on her own legacy singing, “And if you think of me, come years when I’m gone, know that God is great, but you’re enough. There’ll be no judging how you choose to live your days, but never be ashamed of how you love.”
From London to New York, Katie Brayben said this production has been a joy to work on. And she believes that comes from Tammy. Brayben said Tammy moved with positivity and had an “open arms approach to life” that made sure no one was left out of her grace.
“She didn’t exclude anyone, and I think we could all learn from that,” she said. “I feel like there is not much polarization and a lot of hate out there, so I think this show has that overarching message of love, acceptance and inclusivity that we could all use right now.”
Tammy Faye is in previews at the Palace Theater and opens on November 14.
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