Elton John is blaming politics for the failure of his musical “Tammy Faye.”
The EGOT winner, 78, spoke concerning the dear present that he produced having a short-lived run on Broadway in an interview with The Sunday Times revealed Friday.
“We put out two musicals not too long ago, one an enormous flop in America and the opposite an enormous hit in England,” John mentioned, referring to “Tammy Faye” and “The Satan Wears Prada.”
“‘Tammy Faye’ got here out throughout the U.S. election, and it’s all about how the mixing of church and state ruined America, which Ronald Reagan did,” he defined. “It was too political for America. They don’t actually get irony.”
“Tammy Faye” tells the story of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the favored Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s televangelists who shook up spiritual TV with upbeat prayer, inspirational interviews and selection acts. One plotline of the musical considerations how the rise of TV preachers helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency.
The manufacturing debuted on the West Finish in London in 2022, the place it received two Laurence Olivier Awards.
The Broadway present, which was reportedly capitalized at $25 million, opened on Broadway on Nov. 14, 2024 on the Palace Theatre. It shut down only a few weeks later.
In a one-star review, The Put up’s Johnny Oleksinski mentioned John’s rating was made up of “Saltine-cracker songs which can be forgotten the second the viewers applauds.”
The evaluate added, “Go in chilly, and also you’ll go away with no thought about how well-known Jim and Tammy had been or why you’ve simply sat by a musical about them.”
A number of days after the present closed, Elton seemed to blame Donald Trump for the epic failure.
“It’s a reasonably political piece of labor,” he mentioned in an interview with Time magazine in December. “And with that you must press anyone’s buttons. The buttons we pressed final night time with the critics weren’t the correct ones.”
John beforehand instructed The Hollywood Reporter that he was “at all times extremely fascinated” by Tammy Faye Bakker, “so once we received the prospect to jot down the musical, I jumped at it, as a result of I like fascinating folks like that who’ve had nice success after which been banished and misplaced every thing, after which come again due to their religion and due to their perception, and switch the tables.”
John’s hits on Broadway embody the Tony Award-winning “The Lion King” and “Billy Elliot: The Musical.”
His “The Satan Wears Prada” present, based mostly on the 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, opened in London in December to extra scathing evaluations.
In another one-star review, The Put up known as “Prada” “a dud about duds” and “a haute mess.”
