NEW YORK – When Elton John was on tour in America in the 1970s, there was someone on TV who caught his eye. She was an over-the-top, heavy makeup-wearing performer who wore her heart on her sleeve and yet seemed in on the joke — televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. You could say game was recognizing game.
John — who back then toured in bedazzled hats, cartoonish outfits and sported enough sequins to choke an elephant — was drawn to a woman with caked-on makeup, an ability to connect with fans and the skill to return after a gut-punch of betrayal.
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“She fascinated the hell out of me,” John tells The Associated Press. “I love people who come back from the dead, more or less. She was completely outlawed and banished, and she fought through that because of her goodness and kindness and her belief and her faith. It’s an amazing story, Shakespearean in a way."
John has put this Shakespearian heroine's story to song with the stage musical “Tammy Faye” and the latest iteration lands on Broadway this month, championing what he calls “a gladiator on her own terms.”
“She comes from absolute nothing — complete poverty — getting all the fame and the wealth and then losing it all in a world of men,” says book writer James Graham. “There is a universality to that story.”
Who was Tammy Faye?
Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker rose to prominence as the husband-and-wife televangelist hosts of TV’s Praise the Lord Club from 1974 through 1987. They preached the prosperity gospel, a belief that God wants his followers to be wealthy and healthy.
The Bakkers were embroiled in a scandal when Jim Bakker was accused of sexual assault and financial fraud involving hush money paid to his alleged victim. After divorcing Bakker in 1992, Tammy Faye would go on to marry Roe Messner, who was himself convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 1996.
The musical has been retooled from a run in London in 2022, with two songs out and two added. The project has the blessing of her second husband, and her son Jay Bakker, has attended rehearsals.
The creative team — John, Graham, director Rupert Goold and lyricist Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters — is largely British, except for Shears, so they say they were careful coming to America telling the story of an American icon.
“Most of the music is joyous because it’s set in the South and it’s gospel-orientated,” says John. “I consider her to be joyous and so it was quite easy to write the joyous songs. I love that kind of music. I’m basically a born-again Southern person. It just appealed to me.”
Audiences will see a woman — two-time Olivier Award-winner Katie Brayben reprises her West End Tammy Faye — surrounded by men, including portrayals of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson and Marvin Gorman.
“She is the one that no one was really paying attention to. Everyone went, ‘Oh, that silly woman with the hair and the eyes.’ She’s the one who’s lasted and now has a musical on Broadway. And I think that’s great,” says Graham.
Larger issues on show
The musical comes at a time when the culture is reconsidering stories of women lost amid crisis, like Sinéad O’Connor, Janet Jackson and Monica Lewinsky. But the look at Tammy Faye is not entirely sympathetic, pointing out that she turned a blind eye to the vast riches coming into her church.
“We celebrate her values and what she represented and her kookiness and her humor. She got into some stuff as well, though, and we have to hold her accountable for,” says Graham. “We have to test her and push her a bit as well, giving her a prosecution and a defense.”
This is not the first time the story of Tammy Faye Messner, who died of cancer in 2007 at 65, has been explored. RuPaul narrated the documentary “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” which was turned into a Hollywood movie that snagged Jessica Chastain her first Oscar opposite Andrew Garfield.
John has had smashing success on Broadway — like with “The Lion King,” “Aida” and “Billy Elliot: The Musical." He sees a few connections between “Billy Elliot” from 2005 with “Tammy Faye.” Both lampoon conservatives — Margaret Thatcher in “Billy Elliot” and evangelicals in “Tammy Faye” — and both examine traditional gender roles amid culture wars.
Graham hopes a younger audience can connect even without having lived through the time when Messner warbled gospel songs on TV or cried so much her mascara dripped down her cheeks.
“Way before reality television and cancel culture and social media, in a way, she and her family were the very first reality TV family,” he says. “For a younger audience, it's also all about how you celebrate your individual idiosyncrasies and your identity and not apologize for them.”
In the soulful ballad “Empty Hands" that closes Act 1, Brayben as Tammy Faye sings to her husband: “Here I am/Trying to stand/With faithless mercy/Empty hands/I want to forgive you/ But I don't think I can/With faithless mercy and empty hands.”
Messner gained lasting affection for stepping out of the strict evangelical, anti-gay doctrine of the time to show compassion and empathy with Steve Pieters, a gay minister living with HIV and AIDS.
“What she represented even 30 or 40 years ago was a desire to reach across those divides and nothing about her faith contradicted that,” says Graham.
“I think what she represents — that goodness and decency — is something we all, particularly in this election year, need to remind ourselves. We’re not divided by these things. That’s weaponized by people to divide us.”