Forbidden Broadway Reviewed!

Huntington Stabs at Broadway’s Best in Satirical Review

Art Thomas – WestLife

I love Forbidden Broadway. It started in a small New York club room with four singers and one piano player, poking fun at the current Broadway shows. I first saw it more than 25 years ago. Since then, I’ve been at a dozen productions in New York and other professional venues. With quick costume changes and rapier sharp wit, Forbidden Broadway initially seems mean spirited, but is a loving tribute under the surface.

Wondering what would happen if the show ever got released to local theaters, I had that curiosity satisfied this spring at Huntington Playhouse.

Creator/writer Gerard Alessandrini has selected about two dozen of the hundred plus parodies of New York shows, and packaged them. At Huntington Playhouse, director/choreographer Kevin Joseph Kelly has expanded the cast to seven so the lightning quick, costume changes now can be more leisurely for the cast.

You don’t have to be intimately familiar with the shows to enjoy Forbidden Broadway. The more you know, the more you’ll laugh, however. At the performance I attended, everyone seemed to have a great time, and I’m convinced that many in the audience never knew that the songs were parodies. Still, they enjoyed some of the best music written over the last half century for musical theater.

To help us in the audience “get it,” very early we have a 30 year old Annie come on in a red dress, smoking, and lamenting that she hasn’t worked since she was 10. It’s a good start to the show.

This cast is best in the more “generic” roles they have to portray. Tom Castro, Jacob Wadenpfuhl, Jennifer Glowe and Dawn Sniadak, for example, take the opening of Fiddler on the Roof, “Tradition,” and transform it to “An Actor in New York” singing about the qualities that are necessary to make it there.

Undoubtedly, the best piece of material that Alessandrini wrote was a “suite” from Les Miserables. The spinning turntable form the original production delivers cast members who spiritedly sing about the drab costumes and overwrought plot of the show. Hearing Lindsay Pier sing “I Dreamed a Show” about the more bright Broadway shows is worth the price of admission alone. She can belt out a song, does so here, and probably can hit “high E” as well.

Forbidden Broadway is less successful when it takes on shows such as Spamalot and Hairspray because the Broadway shows were parodies to begin with, and things can become a bit confusing.

This cast struggles with the impersonations. Chita Rivera, Rita Morino, Carol Channing and Ethel Merman don’t fare well at all in this production. However, closing your eyes, you can hear Barbara Streisand when Lindsay Pier sings her. Similarly, Trey Gilpin is a beautifully “somewhat overindulgent” Mandy Pantinkin. In every case, director Kelly points as much as he can to help the audience “get the jokes”.

New York’s Forbidden Broadway has featured some of the best keyboard players in the business. At Huntington, music director Heidi Herczeg keeps the tradition with a simplified, but still-overloaded score. She is as much a cast member as the seven singers.

Before you purchase a ticket for Forbidden Broadway consider doing yourself and the theater a favor. This time, spring for a Super Seven Flex Pass book. It will get you seven tickets for any and all shows. You can bring six friends to any performance. A better idea is to make a commitment to see all of the shows this season. Four of the seven Huntington shows this season are new to me, and I’m excited about it.  Take a chance, and enjoy something you are not familiar with.

Forbidden Broadway runs through May 31.