NEW YORK (RNS) — On a weeknight just half a block from Times Square, theatergoers can watch as Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell Sr. grips his mic for his big solo number, Billy Graham spins into a dance break and Pentecostal televangelist Tammy Faye, in her signature statement makeup, belts an 11 o’clock number.
“Is this a fever dream?” a casual viewer might ask.
Close: It’s a Broadway musical.
On Thursday (Nov. 14), “Tammy Faye: A New Broadway Musical” opened at the Palace Theater, and it’s every bit as glitzy and sentimental as you’d hope for in a show about Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker), the charismatic evangelist-turned-gay icon.
With a soaring score from the legendary Elton John, the show casts Falwell and his ilk as villains, Jim Bakker as an insecure, miscreant husband and Tammy as the sparkly, open-hearted heroine. The result is a wildly entertaining, if cursory, exploration of the events surrounding the Bakkers’ rise and fall, and an effective celebration of Tammy Faye’s love-filled legacy and outreach to the gay community.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Tammy Faye and her then-husband, Jim Bakker, built an evangelical empire that included their own satellite network, a Christian theme park and a television show called “Praise the Lord” or “PTL” that, at it …