TV evangelist Tammy plus a blast of Elton... just heavenly!
Tammy Faye Almeida Theatre, London Until December 3, 2hrs 50mins ★★★★★
The Lavender Hill Mob Cheltenham Everyman Touring until February 18, 2hrs ★★★★★
Elton John wrote the music for this love letter to Tammy Faye, the American televangelist with whopping eyelashes who loved gays and put the fun into fundamentalism. The story is of Tammy and her hubby Jim’s PTL (Praise the Lord) satellite network which in the 1980s brought them enormous wealth. Then came financial scandal, marital woe and the crash and burn of their empire.
Jim (Andrew Rannells) was a banal fraudster but Tammy was a TV natural. She’s played by Katie Brayben, a terrific singer who holds together this antic show, with a book by James Graham. Characters appear in windows with a cameo from Archbishop Robert Runcie pouring cold Anglican water on all this evangelical gushing.
Zubin Varla is the growly, grey voice of Christian conservatism as Reverend Jerry Falwell, Tammy’s sinister nemesis. But this is Brayben’s evening: her Tammy is all fluttering heart, twang and soul. Her support for AIDS sufferers cost her dear.
Perhaps Elton’s score (with lyrics by Jake Shears of the band Scissor Sisters) feels a bit phoned in, dashed off between his tour dates. But it finally melts into something satisfying, where rock ’n’ roll meets gospel. For old times’ sake, there’s a quick blast of Crocodile Rock.
The kitsch choreography by Lynne Page is hilarious. But for all its camp silliness, this heavenly chorus of a show succeeds in communicating the capacity for joy hiding behind Tammy’s mascara and money.
The Lavender Hill Mob is an old Ealing comedy. If you remember, it saw Alec Guinness play a mousy bank clerk who steals a load of gold bullion and smuggles it out of the country after melting it down and recasting it as lead-coated Eiffel Tower souvenirs. In this stage version, Miles Jupp plays the clerk, Justin Edwards his sidekick. A Radio 4 treasure, Jupp is a lovely performer, but he’s uneasy in this, and too posh.
The cast multi-task as the tale is told as a parlour game at a New Year’s Eve party with guests acting out the car chases and so forth. It’s got a cheerful amateurism to it but it’s still not a patch on a simply unimprovable film.