EDGE Provincetown

If Pia Zadora and John Waters had a love child she’d likely be Tammy Faye Starlite, the sultry, evangelical country singer who has brought her missionary work to Provincetown for the month of August with her show “Born Again Again.” Looking as if she just walked off the set of “Sex Kittens Go to Bible School,” Tammy Faye is a Red State caricature played in tongue-in-cheek Blue State style by New York actress Tammy Lang. Never has the product of inbreeding been so entertaining.

Inbreeding, it turns out, is just one of the topics she hits upon over this hour-long show, which takes the format of an interview the country star gives with country DJ (cannily played by Jeff Ward) on radio station KKOK after her latest stint in rehab. Tammy’s hook is the imminent release of her latest CD the next day; the only problem is that she’s been told by a rehab cohort that the Apocalypse is imminent, which puts her in an evangelical mood – aren’t there souls to be saved, especially, as she points out, those pesky Jewish and Catholic ones? (“I want to share my good news with everyone, even the Jews,” she says.)

But if the end-of-the-world pans out, then there are CDs to be sold, which gets Tammy singing in a manner in perfect pitch with her Nashville roots. Her songs are as much a homage to the songs of Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette and her namesake Tammy Faye Bakker as a they are parodies of Bible-Belt conservatism. How could you not fall in love with Tammy Faye when she steps out and sings “If you’re comin’ down, Sweet Jesus, won’t you come all over me?” Well, perhaps if you’re Rush Limbaugh, Rich Santorum, or Mitt Romney you might not.

There’s a cheeky bawdiness to her songs, which go places that push the taste envelope with disarming style. Take her sad lament “Did I Shave My Vagina for This?” that includes the couplet “It’s Saturday night and I’m watching the tube, while he goes off to shave another girl’s pubes;” or her affectionate nod to Loretta Lynne with “Moonshiner’s Child,” which chronicles her complicated relationship with moonshine and her father to a breezy, up-tempo beat. She also offers her commentary on abortion – “God Has Lodged a Tenant in My Uterus,” which certainly puts her firmly on the Right side of this cultural debate. (“As a woman, I haven’t any choice,” she concludes in her final verse.)

Between the songs she offers her bimbo-ish commentary on the end-of-the-world, religious tolerance (she has none,) and her own struggle with drugs, alcohol, and men (she’s been married 6 times.) What little plot there is concerns a problem with her philandering husband, nicknamed Elbow, whom she met in rehab and who she plans on going to heaven with later that evening. Perhaps it’s the drug use, but she spaces out much of the time, adding to the general goofiness of the show. She also gets terrific musical support from guitarist Keith Hartel who plays Tammy’s ex-husband and ex-homosexual, who sings of his straight conversion with the refrain “the only man to kneel down before is the man from Galilee.”

Sunday night’s show featured a priceless impromptu comic bit: when an audience member fell fast asleep early in the show, Tammy worked her brilliantly into the show, laying her hands on her nodding head while she sang. It was so funny that you imagine she’d like to work a passed-out patron into every show; yet even without it, Tammy Faye Starlite is pure comic genius – a sweet-tempered take on the hypocrisy of the Religious Right that’s delightfully subversive. Amen, sister Tammy! I’m a believer.

Aug. 4th - Sept. 4th, Thursday -- Sunday at 10 pm. At the UU Meeting House Theatre, Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA. Also August 31, 9 pm, Maine Street Night Club, Ogunquit, ME