Andrew Rannells and Katie Brayben. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Tammy Faye – book by James Graham, music by Elton John, lyrics by Jake Shears – Almeida Theatre, London

The Almeida, and director Rupert Goold, have pulled off quite the coup with Tammy Faye. Of all the people a director might lure to wrote a new musical, Elton John must be top of the list, probably backed up by Jake Shears writing the lyrics. The dream team might not include James Graham, but his involvement is a very clever move. The result is a musical that is just as camp, ludicrous and over-the-top as everyone would expect, but also politically incisive and historically pertinent. Graham serves us up a warning from history that looks amazing and sounds even better.

The recent focus on Tammy Faye Bakker is a little strange. Half of an American tele-evangelist duo with her husband James, who pioneered satellite Christian broadcast as part of a new wave of Reagan conservatism, she also became an unlikely gay icon. As recounted in Michael Showalter’s 20201 film ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, which won Jessica Chastain the 2021 Best Actress Oscar, she incurred the wrath of evangelical peers by inviting HIV positive pastor Steve Pieters onto her show in 1985, when AIDS was being used as a propaganda tool by the religious right and homophobia was standard. Her reputation is built on this remarkable act, which has prevented her from being consigned to history with Jim, who was convicted of fraud and given a 45 year jail term after the couple’s Heritage USA theme park went under, taking the contributions of many viewers with it. She died of cancer in 2007 and the show begins, in a scene neatly balanced between comedy and tragedy, with Tammy Faye (Katie Brayben) on all fours being examined by her proctologist. Her story is fascinating for various reasons: as a story of resistance to expectations, of a woman fighting to be recognised and as an account of a historical era which extends its influence over US and world politics forty years later.

Graham has woven a persuasive account of conservative intolerance around the rise of the Bakkers. He includes a rogue’s gallery of contemporary preachers – Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Marvin Gorman, Oral Roberts and their forbear, Billy Graham – and shows the growth of the tele-evangelists alongside the reintroduction of religion, previously frowned upon, into US politics by Ronald Reagan. Before long evangelical Christians were voting as a block, brought together partly by the unprecedented reach of tv preachers, and declaring war on the liberal issues of feminism, gay rights and abortion. Plus ça change. The evangelists were deeply unpleasant people (and still are – Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson are both still alive and full of hate), but they were big characters and, as well as providing the kind of history lesson only Graham can deliver, ‘Tammy Faye’ is wildly enjoyable ride. Zubin Varla’s Jerry Falwell is all five o’clock shadow and ’70s suits, and unveils a powerful tenor voice to boot. Ashley Campbell gives us an absurd Elvis-esque Jimmy Graham, not to mention a scene as Larry Flynt. Nicholas Rowe is Pat Robertson, Ted Turner, the CNN owner who unleashed Christian tv on the world, and Pope John Paul II. Steve John Shepherd pulls off the equally remarkable trio of Jimmy Swaggart (seedy), Robert Runcie (dishevelled) and Ronald Reagan (very convincing). Kelly Agbowu and Richard Dempsey make an amusing duo as the Praise The Lord Club’s incompetent, increasingly rebellious management team.

This is all very enjoyable, but the stars of the show are Katie Brayben as Tammy Faye and Andrew Rannells, as Jim. Cycling through costumes from their ’60s Christian puppet show beginnings to their ’70s rise, ’80s heyday and fall from grace, they both deliver wide-eyed, driven performances, taking themselves as seriously as only Americans can, even when they are singing Jakes Shears’ innuendo-laden lyrics. A sample number (about Jesus) has the chorus “He’s inside Tammy and he’s inside Jim”. On stage virtually throughout, Brayben is a powerhouse with a top notch voice, probably a great deal more likeable than the real Tammy Faye (who was mysteriously untouched by the fraud prosecutions that brought the couple down). Rannells plays Jim as significantly less sharp than Tammy and flawed in ways that only he cannot see. The pair pile into Elton and Jake’s songs, which range from catchy tunes (‘Bring Me the Eyes of Tammy Faye’) to Bonnie Tyler-esque power ballads (‘Prime Time’ with the hair to match, Tammy being at her ’80s peak). Goold has packed more entertainment into the evening than anyone has the right to expect, filling the stage with capering chorus lines involving Colonel Sanders, an extremely camp Pontius Pilate, flogging a Jesus who seems to be enjoying it and debates between the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mormon President, Thomas Momson. Rannells interviews Reagan during a lifestyle cookery segment, pausing to declare to camera “You cannot have too much cinnamon.” Bunny Christie’s set is simple but effective, using a Celebrity Squares wall of television screens. Katrina Lindsay costumes deserved a curtain call of their own.

‘Tammy Faye’ is a real achievement – entertainment, satire and historical reflection in an equal partnership. With any luck it will transfer to the West End, where it can offer lots more people a very good time and give the Almeida some important financial certainty.