FORBIDDEN BROADWAY Cancels Broadway Run Due To 'Crowded' Season

Gerard Alessandrini’s Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song has canceled their run at the Hayes Theatre over concerns of an overcrowded Broadway season.

In a statement today, producers Ryan Bogner, Victoria Lang and Tracey McFarland said, “We made the difficult decision today to postpone the upcoming Broadway production of Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole A Song. The Broadway landscape is enormously crowded at this moment, and while we adore Forbidden Broadway, we are disappointed that the show will not open at the Hayes on Broadway this summer. New programming for the Hayes Theater this summer will be announced soon.”

This is the second Broadway production this year to cancel a run after going on sale. The West End hit My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?) was set to load into the Lyceum Theatre when producers called off the production less than three weeks before the first scheduled performance.
 
Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song was set to be created around the current and recent seasons of Broadway and include spoofs of the new and upcoming Broadway musicals and plays like The Great Gatsby, The Notebook, Water for Elephants, Hell’s Kitchen and Back to the Future, as well as current and recent Sondheim revivals like Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Company and Merrily We Roll Along.
 
Forbidden Broadway was born in 1982 in New York’s 130-seat Palsson’s Supper Club. It has gone on to play in over 200 cities around the world in venues holding thousands. The show has spawned multiple iterations with Mr. Alessandrini continually updating the material to reflect Broadway’s current slate; a few timeless evergreens remain. Almost no show has escaped the long arm of Forbidden Broadway. Alessandrini’s wit has poked at scores of shows (and their scores); actors and directors are no exception either. Being on the receiving end of his loving barbs is considered both an honor and a rite of passage by legions of theatre legends. In addition to Forbidden Broadway, Spamilton, Gerard’s spoof of the Hamilton phenomenon was a runaway hit for two years and continues to tour the US. For his work on Forbidden Broadway in all its forms, Gerard Alessandrini and the show received a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre and seven Drama Desk Awards.