Tammy Faye, the musical created by Elton John, James Graham and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, is to close on Broadway less than a month after its opening night.
The show about the eponymous TV evangelist sold out at London’s Almeida theatre in 2022, received rave reviews and was nominated for best new musical at the Olivier awards the following year. But on Tuesday it was announced that it will have its final curtain at the Palace theatre in New York on 8 December. That will be its 29th performance; the musical also had 24 previews before opening.
This month, the show has failed to fill more than two-thirds of its audience capacity. In the week ending 17 November, it drew a gross of $374,371 with an overall attendance of 5,732 (63% of capacity). New York’s critics were less impressed than London’s by the Rupert Goold production. In her review, the New York Times’s Elisabeth Vincentelli called Tammy Faye “strangely bland” considering its larger-than-life subject matter. Variety’s Frank Rizzo said it was a “misguided West End import”.
Katie Brayben has made her Broadway debut reprising her Olivier award-winning role as Faye, this time opposite Christian Borle as Faye’s first husband and TV co-star, Jim Bakker. The married evangelists found fame in the 1970s through their television network, PTL (Praise the Lord). Faye was known for her singing voice, abundant emotion and extravagant makeup; a 2021 biopic starring Jessica Chastain was called The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
The musical charts her rise to fame, a series of scandals and the backlash against her advocacy for gay rights. In 1985, Faye raised awareness of HIV and Aids through a famous interview with Steve Pieters, a gay church pastor living with HIV. “She won me over when she did that,” Elton John told ABC News last month. Her allyship was “pretty remarkable for someone in the religious community,” John added.
John’s musical version of The Devil Wears Prada, starring Vanessa Williams, is now at the Dominion theatre in London. Graham’s new play, Punch, transfers from Nottingham Playhouse to the Young Vic in London in March.
