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Tammy Faye
Tammy Faye

Elton John’s TAMMY FAYE Takes Broadway by Storm with Award-Winning Stars

Before Olivier Award–winning British actress Katie Brayben was cast in the title role of Tammy Faye, she was unfamiliar with the distinctly American story at the core of the new musical. “I didn’t know who she was,” Brayben admits, referring to the televangelist Tammy Faye Messner, who made headlines in the late 1980s when her then-husband, Jim Bakker—with whom she had created the hugely popular program The PTL Club—was charged with rape and convicted of fraud.

Brayben did her research, and wound up scoring a second Olivier last year for her performance in the Almeida Theatre production of Tammy Faye. Helmed by acclaimed artistic director Rupert Goold, it featured choreography by Lynne Page, a book by James Graham, lyrics by founding Scissor Sisters member and solo artist Jake Shears, and music by pop icon and musical theater veteran Elton John.

That creative team now arrives on Broadway, where Tammy Faye is set to begin previews October 19 and open November 14 at the Palace Theatre. Brayben is on board as well, making her Broadway debut in an otherwise new cast that includes two of the Main Stem’s most celebrated musical theater actors: two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle, who plays Jim Bakker, and two-time Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris, as the televangelist and conservative activist Jerry Falwell, a key figure in both the Bakkers’ rise and that of the “moral majority” that gained political influence in the ’80s.

Tammy Faye, who eventually divorced Jim and married Roe Messner, became an ally to the LGBT community as it was still being ravaged by AIDS. And all three of Tammy Faye’s lead actors suggest that the musical celebrates the spirit that informed her personal arc.

“We don’t shy away from how complex these characters are,” Brayben points out. “Jim is incredibly complex. I think we know even less about him, but their love was the kernel that started everything, and they started off with good hearts and good intentions.”

Borle agrees: “One of the sweet things in the story is the dynamic between Jim and Tammy. His love for her is true, and there are so many aspects of this character where I feel like he doesn’t know himself—and that’s where he gets into trouble.”

But Borle adds, “This show is called Tammy Faye for a reason. Katie almost never leaves the stage, and she has a mountain to climb every night. But she makes it look so easy. She has an effortless way about her, and a truthfulness that’s really easy to play off of.”

Cerveris, who has known Borle for years—they worked together back in the 1990s, in a German production of The Who’s Tommy in which Cerveris starred—has been similarly impressed by the leading lady. “I had heard wonderful things about Katie from friends in London, and she surpassed those raves, personally and professionally. She’s just the most delightful person, and a fantastic actress.”

The performers also have praise for Elton John. Cerveris has “been a fan for as long as I can remember,” and both Borle and Brayben describe working with the composer as “a dream come true.” They feel the same for their director Rupert Goold, whose boldly theatrical sensibility has become known to Broadway audiences through his productions of plays and musicals, such as Ink, Enron, American Psycho, and, most recently, Patriots.

“Rupert has a remarkable ear for the rhythm and tone and flow of a show, and he treats musicals with the same respect and weight as he would treat Shakespeare,” Cerveris notes. “He works hand in glove with the choreographer so that everything is telling a story and filling the stage with life. … You’ve got some great comedy and big musical numbers, but there’s also a level of dramatic storytelling woven through it.”

As Borle tells it, the story relayed in Tammy Faye “goes really deep. It’s about a lot more than Jimmy and Tammy Faye. It gets into geopolitics, into how Jerry Falwell was able to create this majority within the Republican party and get evangelicals to line up and change the face of American politics forever.”

Indeed, Brayben finds it “really interesting that we’re doing this show right now, showing the power of religion on politics,” with a presidential election set for nine days before opening night. “This musical is telling a story from the sixties to the nineties, and yet it seems very up-to-date.”

When asked about portraying Falwell, Cerveris, whose previous Broadway roles include Juan Perón and Sweeney Todd, quips, “I do have a rogues’ gallery of characters on my résumé, but this is one of the more reprehensible figures that I’ve played. To be honest, it made me stop and think about whether I could inhabit this person’s skin for the length of the run. But as I’ve told groups of young actors, I take jobs on the basis of things that present new challenges.”

“The important thing is that the story you’re telling with everyone else has a message that you can stand behind ethically,” he adds. “And everybody, from Elton to James to Jake to Rupert, is trying to tell a story that’s really about belief and faith and love, even though those things get regrettably distorted because of things like greed and ambition, and how power corrupts people.”

Borle, too, stresses that “while the show explores faith, it does not mock faith. One of the reasons Tammy Faye is such an enduring figure is that she believed in love over hate. And wherever you stand politically, that’s a universal message.”

Both Brayben and Borle have been touched by feedback they’ve received from Jay Bakker, Jim and Tammy Faye’s son, whom Borle notes “has been a champion of the show. He talked to us through tears; he said, ‘This all happened to me, and it’s wonderful and surreal to see it all unfold.’”

Brayben met with Jay after he first saw the show in London, “and he was so generous afterwards. It was very emotional and cathartic for him, and for me, because he really feels like he and his mum are cut from the same cloth: He’s a nonjudgmental person who is also a devout Christian, but in a very open way.”

Cerveris has been “constantly and pleasantly surprised to see how skillfully this show treads the line between sincerity and satire. I think it respects people’s sincere desire to believe there is something beyond themselves, that there are things like goodness and kindness, while sometimes taking a hard look at how people who claim to have the most moral superiority can behave in the most immoral ways. That’s a message that could not be more appropriate for the exact moment we’re living in.”


Previews for Broadway’s Tammy Faye begin October 19 at the Palace Theatre with an opening night scheduled for November 14. Orchestra seats during previews start at $79 so get the best seats for the best price today!

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