Tammy Faye
Almeida Theatre | ★★★★✩

The names attached to this new musical are illustrious. Elton John wrote the music, Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters the lyrics, award winning political playwright James Graham produced the book and the whole thing is directed by the Almeida’s own Rupert Goold.

Even the eponymous subject has a huge if somewhat tragic reputation. Tammy Faye and her husband Jim took American TV evangelism to new heights with their own station in the 1960s.

Their Christian message, which was delivered through toothy smiles and with homespun charm, subverted the misogynist male preacher establishment, especially when Tammy proved the more talented broadcaster of the husband and wife team.

Anyone familiar with Jon Ronson’s fascinating radio and podcast series Things Fell Apart, about how the culture wars began, will know Tammy. She was the subject of his favourite episode if memory serves.

In this staged telling her story starts in earnest when CNN founder Ted Turner offered Tammy and Jim (played by the excellent Andrew Rannells who is a dead ringer for the real thing) not just a TV show but an entire station.

Bible Belt preaching was all shook up but it was when Tammy embraced a gay AIDS victim live on air that she outraged the bigoted wing of the Christian right.

This was at a time when America was turning its back on AIDS victims, a fear and loathing captured in plays such as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart.

Tammy Faye. Katie Brayben, Robyn Rose, Georgia Louise, Kelly Agbowu. Photo - Marc Brenner (5)

Katie Brayben

Against this background Tammy had a talent for empathising with people’s real lives instead of judging her congregation.

Her and Jim’s ratings-winning format was a mix of Christ and cooking. According to this show’s version of events the male dominated preacher business, led by firebrand Jerry Falwell (played by Zubin Varla) was so scandalised by this new challenge to their (self proclaimed) moral high ground that they conspired to shut Tammy and Jim down and divvy up the congregations for their own struggling TV shows.

So that’s Tammy. But the real story of this show is Katy Brayben who plays her. None of Brayben’s previous roles, including her Princess Diana in King Charles III or even her Olivier-winning Carole King in Beautiful fully revealed the talents of this British actor/singer.

But Tammy does. Unleashed from the limitations of recreating a pop star’s hits Brayben supercharges John’s rather less then inspired music. The staging is somewhat disappointing too.

Bunny Christie’s design, a wall of old-school televisions screens, locates period and place nicely but when the cast is in full sail the show needs a Susan Stroman (the woman behind

The Producers and The Scottsboro Boys) to drill the set pieces. Here they occupy the space energy but the movement — so vital for a show that aspires to be a popular musical — is lacking.

Still, when Brayben is on stage which is most of the time nothing else matters. A bit like Tammy herself, she is a bit of a miracle. It is as though this is the role she has been waiting for.