‘Tammy Faye,’ With a Big Assist From Elton John, Captures the Televangelism Era in All Its Messy Glory

Over nearly two and a half hours, the Broadway musical makes its case for the title character’s eventual ascent to heaven — loudly and ardently, with precisely the mix of earnestness and irreverence one might expect.

Matthew Murphy
Katie Brayben and Christian Borle in 'Tammy Faye.' Matthew Murphy

The first image presented in the new Broadway musical “Tammy Faye,” before the curtain even rises, is a pair of gleaming, heavily mascaraed blue eyes, representing those of the show’s heroine, Tammy Faye Bakker. Then, as the orchestra begins to play, those eyes well up and leak tears, and that mascara — through a trick of Finn Ross’s video design — begins to streak, quickly forming sizable smudges.

The real Tammy Faye Bakker — who died Tammy Faye Messner in 2007, having remarried by that point — was, of course, nearly as notorious for her heavy hand with makeup as she was for the scandals that implicated Jim Bakker, her first husband and partner in televangelism, in the late 1980s. 

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