Tammy Faye: A New Musical - Almeida

It’s going to sell when (not if) it transfers regardless of what length of gap there is between runs. Best of Enemies didn’t announce their transfer for at least six months. Plenty of shows haven’t announced their transfers until after the original run ended.

People get too hung up on the idea of momentum but it’s just how you market.

No, that’s just not correct at all. Jerry Springer’s final performance at the NT was on 30th Sept and it started previews in the West End on 14th October. They announced and started selling tickets for the West End run in early July, nearly two months before the NT run finished. They could not have rushed it into the West End faster.

Besides Jerry Springer was a very controversial show, that started life as a small fringe show. Not sure if that’s a good comparison. Though JS still ran for a couple of years in the West End and won four Oliviers.

Perhaps your memory is better than mine but I remember quite a lull between the transfer, not to mention, next to zero publicity.

I know you claim otherwise and I hope you are right that a transfer really is in place but until a theatre/dates are announced I will remain sceptical. This strategy of not maximising on the opening publicity/a mostly sold-out run is risky. If they announce before year's end, fair enough. But something seems odd here and most theatres now have tenants on the books between now and next autumn.

Sad to feel so sceptical but there it is.

You are incorrect. They didn’t have any theatre lined up yet, so nothing was in place. They wanted to transfer it, but that’s all.

I think they will by the way. They will only need Elton J to do some publicity for it and that will help a lot.

They need time to work on the book, cut a few songs and improve the design.

Happy to wait for the announcement.

Assessing the wording with tin foil caps on - KB’s post has an air of finality, while others are more of “be back soon” vibe… so perhaps she isn’t transferring with it.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

I don't get that from her posts. She said thats the end for Tammy Faye at the Almeida. Nothing to suggest thats the end for her.

Having seen both in the role of Tammy Faye, they shouldn't transfer it without her. She elevated the material to a different level. Yes Gemma Sutton was OK, but she didnt have the same impact that KB did. Yes she was probably very under rehearsed, but she has been involved with the show far a few years now.

I make sure I avoid the first previews and last night when booking any show. I’ve been caught out in the past and it’s such a faff to reschedule esp when you are at the theatre a lot

I am belatedly posting my thoughts on this, as I was lucky enough to go to the Friday evening show on 18 November.

I enjoyed Tammy Faye a lot, and, somewhere here is a five-star show waiting to burst out. This isn't quite there.

Part of the problem is that the show lionises Tammy Faye, and for that to sit comfortably, we need to divorce this female evangelist/business woman from the ugly deception that parted the gullible from their cash. No amount of revisionism to transform her into a gay icon is going to pass muster frankly given the facts.

But this is musical theatre, so, with a sufficient sprinkling of glamour, let's suppose you can get away with that.

The next problem is that I enjoyed the drama a lot more than I did the music (- a bit like Dear Evan Hansen in that regard). There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the score; in fact, I imagine, I'll be buying a cast recording if/when it becomes available. I think it was the orchestrations and band-size limitations: we had imitations of country and gospel without embracing those genres fully to my ears. A larger stage with a larger band and better, louder sound would help. The lyrics too were merely functional. They didn't drive the narrative and lacked wit.

I had only the faintest memory of Jim and Tammy Bakker from the news when their fraud was exposed. Watching some archive video clips of the couple before writing this, I am struck by how well Andrew Rannells nailed Jim Bakker. Katie Bryden's performance is excellent, but she creates her own Tammy more than she impersonates the original. That's fine. The real Tammy Faye seems even more ebullient and larger than life than the script allows, with even bigger hair and outlandish make-up at times.

I attended a Bible Bapist, evangelical, American church in the UK for a couple of years in my early teens when I was on a mission to discover God -- I failed -- and one of the attractions was the joyful, uplifting gospel music (and also hanging out with the clean-cut son of the pastor who was the quintessential all-American boy, but that's another story). I quit the church, depressingly unshaken from agnosticism, but with an appreciation for evangelicals. I still do not understand how Christians, if they take the New Testament at face value, can stand idly by thinking that their unsaved family members are going to burn in the fires of Hades. Evangelicals do at least seem to care. Except when it's merely an angle for big business, of course.

I had never heard of the Praise-The-Lord tv channel. Tammy Faye the Musical makes it look a helluva lot of fun, and probably a must-watch for musical theatre fans. I imagine in reality it was a lot more "send us money to avoid eternal damnation" than Busby Berkeley.

I think I must be the only person on this board who enjoyed Act 2 more than Act 1, but there may have been tweaks by the time I saw it, and I was probably still coming down from the stressful working day during the first half. I hadn't read this thread beforehand, so I was unprepared when some people started clapping during the final song. It felt rude to do that while someone was singing new lyrics, so I held off until the end. Normally, bows with music occur during an instrumental piece or a reprise. This was most odd.

On whether this could transfer to the West End with a different leading lady, I am surprised by the overwhelming consensus that it couldn't. Bryden is very good, but it's a little insulting to other actresses to suggest we have no-one else in the UK (or available on loan from elsewhere in the world) who couldn't also excel as Tammy.

Four stars

Act 1: 19:35-20:53
Act 2: 21:15-22:23

From WhatsOnStage

"......audiences shouldn't lose hope that this is the last we'll see of Tammy Faye – lyricist Jake Shears posted a comment saying: "See you after intermission kids" on social media – suggesting a future life is very much being courted."

Apart from cutting a verse from 2 songs, the show stayed the same pretty much the entire run.

There is a cheeky recording of the show out there.