TAMMY FAYE
2 / 10
The trouble with this conception is that Tammy Faye herself is almost the least garish thing about it. Brayben won an Olivier Award for this role, but there’s a fundamental Englishness about her that she can’t quite shake; she’s solid and sympathetic, and sings extremely well, but she doesn’t access Tammy’s rawness and almost childlike ebullience—the personal charisma at the center of her brand of Charismatic Christianity. And the musical doesn’t help her get there. The qualities that made Tammy Faye a gay icon—the cosmetics, the pills, the excess, the tears—are addressed only glancingly; we don’t get inside her head about them. Instead, Tammy Faye serves us a likable, sincere gal doing the best she can in a world whose machinations she doesn’t understand. But does Tammy Faye understand them any better? Its point of view is hard to discern. The eyes may be a window to the soul, as Tammy was wont to say, but it’s hard to see the soul through eyes that can’t decide if they’re glaring, winking or crying.
