The parodies in this latest edition of Forbidden Broadway range from hilarious (Cabaret) to clever but not especially funny (Back to the Future) to lame (Wicked.) In other words, it’s hit and miss, as usual. But couldn’t you say the same about “Saturday Night Live”? Forbidden Broadway is almost as old – and arguably just as much an icon-taunting institution, albeit for a narrower constituency.
Gerard Alessandrini debuted his first Forbidden Broadway revue in 1982 – the same year, as he points out in a program note, that marked the premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” Hence, the subtitle of this, the 27th Off-Broadway edition, and the rationale (as if anybody needed one) for the songs of Sondheim to take up about a quarter of the more than two dozen numbers in this 90-minute show; Sondheim even appears as a character. Alessandrini also uses the show’s long life as an excuse to do what the revue has always done, mix old Broadway with what’s currently on the boards.
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.
Such is the case when Chris Collins-Pisano dresses in Cole Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln outfit from “Oh, Mary” and then sings to the tune of Sweeney Todd:
Attend the tale of Mary Todd
I’m very funny
But very odd
— one of the several times that Sondheim’s repertoire is incorporated into “Forbidden Broadway” when it’s focusing on a non-Sondheim musical.
Nicole Vanessa Ortiz does an impressive turn as Audra McDonald singing to the tune of “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, with another invocation of Broadway history in one memorable verse (sure to spark some argument if not outrage) recapping famous Roses:
“Merman was too loud
Patti was too proud
Bernadette was meek
Rozzie russell weak
Tyne was under pitch
Staunton was a bitch
Midler was too brash
Betty Buckley trash
Angie was alright
But she was polite”
The show relies on “Back to The Future” for a couple of special skits/shticks, including one in which Hayward and Chris Collins-Pisano as Casey and Roger run into a young Stephen Sondheim (Jenny Lee Stern) in 1945, who is fascinated with their DeLorean car, and skips a musical theater lesson with “Uncle Oscar” to go on a spin with them – with the result that he grows up to design a popular car called a Sondheim… and “A Little Night Music” is composed by one Herman Schwabb, forcing the duo to go back in time to fix things. (This feels like a missed opportunity for an entire musical number, rather than a punchline, about what Broadway would have been like without Sondheim.)
“The Power of Love,” also from Back to the Future, is turned into “The Power of Math,” with Broadway equations drawn on with one of those paper flip charts used at business meetings: “Hamilton + Annie = “(next page) “Suffs.” By the time they got to “West Side Story + Grease =” the audience shouted out “The Outsiders.” Which leads to “The Outdated” and Pony Boy (in another spot-on outfit) singing:
I’ve never done plays on Broadway before.
I’m young, and I’m tortured and hot.
My angst and self-pity will make you adore
The way that I suffer a lot
The Outsiders parody goes on too long for my taste, but it at least has some variety and verve. Some of the one-note barbs fall flat: Ortiz in “& Juliet” sings Sore (to the tune of Roar) because she has to sing so high; the full company sings “Company” as “Bump-A-Knee” because the last revival of the musical staged the performers so close together; Ortiz as Cynthia Erivo sings “age-defying Elphaba” (to the tune of Defying Gravity) because at age 37 she’s portraying the teenage witch in the forthcoming movie of “Wicked.” Other numbers work better in conception than execution, such as Great Gatsby for Dummies. Still other numbers, parodying such current shows as Hell’s Kitchen and Suffs, feel more obligatory than inspired.
Not every number in “Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song” spoofs a Broadway musical. The first number spoofs the theater audience, post-pandemic: Stern as an usher sings (to the tune of Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat from How to Succeed…) “Sit Down You’re Blocking the Aisle.” Another number spoofs “CATS: The Jellicle Ball” which was Off-Broadway.
And two numbers, not spoofs at all, are about Forbidden Broadway itself – one recounting its forty-year history to the tune of Merrily We Roll Along (How did we breach the copyright laws/Wicked to Wiz to Wizard of Oz”) and one, clearly smarting from the scotched plan to bring “Forbidden Broadway” for the first time this year to Broadway itself:
“Our wit
Will never be legit
But that’s ok
Forbidden Off-Broadway!”
Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song
Theater 555 through January 5. Update: It’s now closing November 3
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $87-$107
Created, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini
Choreography by Gerry McIntyre
Set design by Glenn Bassett, costume design by Dustin Cross, lighting design by Joan Racho-Jansen, sound design by Andy Evan Cohen, hair and wig design by Ian Joseph, production supervisor Peter R. Feuchtwanger
Musical director and pianist: Fred Barton
Cast: Chris Collins-Pisano, Danny Hayward, Nicole Vanessa Ortiz, Jenny Lee Stern.
