Created, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, with musical staging by Gerry McIntyre, FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: Merrily We Stole a Song skewers the latest deluge of Broadway offerings including Hell’s Kitchen, Stereophonic, The Outsiders, The Great Gatsby, Back to the Future, The Wiz, and of course, Merrily We Roll Along. In addition, there will be sendups of Roger Bart, Patti LuPone, Daniel Radcliffe, Ariana DeBose and Jeremy Jordan, among others. This up-to-the-minute version will also poke fun at the 2024 Tony Awards, and will include some of the most popular numbers from Alessandrini’s recent Forbidden Sondheim.
This mix works best when past and present exist side by side (by side), such as when Danny Hayward performs the song “Wilkommen” from “Cabaret.” He is first an elegant Joel Grey in 1966 (“You would adore/Our catchy score/and beg for more”), then strips off his tuxedo to portray Alan Cumming in suspenders and black cap (“My show was dark/As a black hearse/But scream in pain/Eddie Redmayne/Is even worse”), then strips even further and sticks on a stupid party hat and yellow kitchen gloves (“I’m Eddie Redmayne/And I have no charm/I will repulse you/Sniff my underarm – and lick it.”) As in most of the funniest parodies in the show, it’s the costumes designed by Dustin Cross and wigs by Ian Joseph most likely to provoke a laugh-out-loud reaction.
Though Broadway, with its vanities and oddities, is in many ways an easy target, hitting satirical bull’s-eyes is hard. Expecting Alessandrini to be as consistently sharp and catchy as the best musicals he ransacks is unrealistic. Even if the music direction by Fred Barton is, as always, top-notch, the show’s staging is rudimentary, the pacing of its mere 90 minutes erratic and pocked with potholes. As such, it’s probably a good thing that last summer’s planned production of “Forbidden Broadway on Broadway” didn’t work out; the scruffy, sarcastic, bare-bones revues that this franchise is modeled on no longer have a home there.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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