| TAMMY FAYE last Saturday | |
| Posted by: NeoAdamite 07:26 am EDT 10/29/24 | |
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| I've been trying to figure out what the writers were going for here. My best guess is that they wanted to tell a redemption story: Tammy Faye is naive but sincere, falls in with an irresponsible fool, and is encouraged to be selfish; she then suffers humiliation, and ultimately redeems herself by treating gays (and HIV+ folks in general) like people. If that's their goal, they tell that story poorly and the whole thing is just lukewarm. Well, from Tammy's 11 o'clock number ("If You Came to See Me Cry") to the end they give us an orgy of empowerment cliches and feelgood nonsense, all fine-tuned to get the audience roused. That does hit its crass marks. The structural fault is that Tammy Faye has barely any obstacles and barely any faults. She has no significant challenges at all until the very end of Act 1, and the worst we see at any point is some selfish behavior and substance abuse. When the financial scandals come, the show assumes she knew nothing, which leaves the character with nothing to play. And, maybe more importantly, is this a story worth telling? To do it, the writers have to look away from the bigger picture in a way that Americans can't: This is the story of how a cancer took root, one that has grown to the point where it threatens to kill off our very democracy. In TAMMY FAYE, the villains (Jim Baker, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, etc.) are all defeated by the end, but the story pretends that this solves the problem of the toxic institutions they founded. The cast is terrific, Katie Brayben carries the whole show without straining. Michael Cerveris (as Falwell) has the only other great number, and really the only other fully realized part. |
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