Tammy Faye: A New Musical - Almeida

Can anyone give an estimate of a run time ie. accurate end time for the show? TYIA

Started about 10 mins late on Friday and I think we were out about 10.30 so it was about 2hrs 50mins.

New thread created for A Little Life here:

theatreboard.co.uk/thread/9982/little-life-hove-phoenix-rumour

I'm so sorry, that's awful news. I'm guessing it's one of the leads and no understudy?
If its any help I did see a tweet a few days ago from the theatre to say that everyone who has queued so far for returns has got in.

Really? I have a Twitter account

Was my first time at the Almeida…can now say I’ve been in the lobby!

It's someone else's account, I think its an Andrew Rannells fan account and they have copied your post from here.

‘Doctor Theatre’ is a real thing - performers can and do run on adrenaline when they are ill and power through a performance.

Trouble is you pay the price for it afterwards.

Would not be surprising if someone managed the matinee but then was too wiped out by the effort for the evening, and needs to rest up before press night tomorrow.

Really enjoyed the matinee of this today. I was flickering between a 4 and 5 star (went for 5), if I had the option for 4.5 or 9/10 it would be there. Really, Katie Brayben is giving an award worthy performance, and is delivering a world class musical theatre performance. Andrew Rannells is great also, but it’s no different really to his role in The Prom and many other things he’s done. Zubin Varla also has some excellent moments, and the supporting cast are fantastic, playing many different roles throughout.
The staging is great, actually for a transfer they’d need somewhere fairly wide to make use of the “wings” as they have here. I liked the score on a first listen, and the book was very well put together. I’d love to listen to a cast album should they make one and I think the score will definitely grow on me.
All in all it’s one of those occasions where a new musical has all the elements and has clicked together very nicely. No doubt this will have every success and I’m very very pleased I’ve booked for the penultimate night too.

I was also at today's matinee, and absolutely LOVED the show, and concur that Katie Brayben is ON FIRE as Tammy Faye!

This show is a really entertaining biography of a singularly caring and eccentric woman, caught in a rats' nest of a life, whose love of performing and people is unaffected and joyful. Three or four of the songs are memorable, and it all works brilliantly to tell Tammy Faye's story.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Rupert Goold casts his musicals well, doesn't he, not just in the big roles, but with luxury casting in the ensemble roles too!

I remember how jam packed "American Psycho" was with great performances in the margins, one of which was Katie Brayben herself as Matt Smith's illicit lover lol, but in a cast that included amazing turns from Jonathan Bailey, Ben Aldridge, Lucie Jones, Susannah Fielding, etc.

And here again, the same luxury casting around the margins, with Gemma Sutton (the most empathetic Julie Jordan in the Arcola's "Carousel", and incandescent as Louise in "Gypsy" when she took over from Lara Pulver) and Fred Haig (dazzling support in the National's "Follies") brilliantly shining up small roles in case they have to take over the main ones, for which they are the understudies.

And also in the supporting cast, there is amazing work from Amy Booth-Steel (what a great comedienne!), Kelly Agbowu (what a voice!), Georgia Louise (what dynamism!), Ashley Campbell (how empathetic!), and many more!

Realistically though, this story is all about Tammy Faye, and ONLY Tammy Faye, and it is deliberately written to make you care about her and NOBODY else.

This is different from film portrayals of this same story, where you at least felt something for other characters (eg Tammy's mother and father, not portrayed here, or Bakker himself, here not given any distinguishing personality characteristics or charm that might make you care about his world).

That's why it matters so much that Katie Brayben makes such a loveable person out of Tammy Faye, that her love of performing is so infectious, that her empathy for others comes across so strongly, that her hurt hurts. Because, after all, Tammy Faye's lifeforce is the WHOLE SHOW. Everything and everybody else depicted are obstacles to HER thriving.

Her biggest obstacle is, of course, Zubin Varla's Jerry Falwell, and Varla makes hay out of this manipulative right wing monstrosity. Basically, he takes the repression-gargling sadsack that he played so heartbreakingly in the Young Vic's "Fun Home," and reprises and mutates him, into a powerhouse dynamo of ambitious evil lol! Varla's signature tune here is "Satellite of God," in which he sees the mindwarping power and propagandist potential of Satellite TV, and Varla owned that song!

Though he's often more antagonist than protagonist, and his part is not written to generate any audience identification, Andrew Rannells is great silly supportive fun when he's playing puppets with Brayben, and he sings wonderfully, especially in duets and with the whole ensemble, in songs like "Heritage USA" and "He's inside me," which is possibly the funniest song in the show, with the lines about Jesus being "inside women" and "inside men" being particularly amusing. "He Promised Me" is possibly the most rousing song of the show, and Rannells is an important part of this dynamically performed ensemble showcase.

But the songs that let me know it's a musical, the ones that made me care, were all Brayben's: "Open Hands" is appropriately affecting in a pure Dolly Partonesque way, rather than than with full Whitney frills, which are reserved for the more distraught "Empty Hands," the more debauched "Prime Time," and the supremely affecting 11 O'clock number, "If you came to see me cry."

But in terms of sheer conception, "See you in heaven " moved me the most. (See it to discern what I mean lol).

So, although I wouldn't say any part of this show reinvents any wheels, I would say it's singular focus on one singular woman, portrayed in a career-defining way by Katie Brayben, makes this four and a half stars of fun for me.