One of the biggest Broadway hits of the New York theatrical season isn`t on Broadway at all.
It`s in a small, 125-seat basement theater on the Upper East Side. The ambience is Kit Kat Club and the audience sits at tables that resemble those in a sushi bar, sipping raspberry ginger ale and munching chocolate cake while they watch the performance. The tiny stage is one only Kukla, Fran and Ollie would find ample and, at one point, one of the actors has to swing from ceiling water pipes to complete his number.
Yet the show features stars on the order of ”The Phantom of the Opera`s” Michael Crawford, ”Les Miserables` ” Tim Shew, ”Anything Goes`
” Patti LuPone, Madonna, Jackie Mason and Joel Grey-not to speak of Liza Minnelli (the name as published has been corrected in this text), Judy Garland, Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. Did we leave out Robert Goulet? Sorry.
Production numbers? You get the battle scene from ”Les Miz,” complete with pop gun. You get the chandelier scene from ”Phantom,” except the tiny chandelier is mostly obscured by a singer`s head. You get ”Cats” crawling around the audience, or at least, ”Cat.” And of course, you get ”A Chorus Line,” though the line is only four people long.
Hit Broadway songs? Practically every one you`ve ever heard, except that, if you listen carefully, the three roly polies singing ”Ain`t Misbehavin`
” are really singing ”Ain`t Missed a Dinner.” The ”I Get a Kick out of You” Cole Porter number being belted out up there is actually being rendered ”I Get a Kick out of Me”-and the Patti LuPone doing the belting isn`t really Patti LuPone, even though, as in all good parody, she looks and sounds more like LuPone than LuPone.
What`s going on here is ”Forbidden Broadway 1988,” a wickedly clever and mercilessly hilarious satirical musical revue aimed like a battleship broadside at the other Broadway-nightly sinking the big hits, the big songs, the big stars and-yes-Elaine Stritch, too.
”Forbidden Broadway” takes absolutely no prisoners, not even Mary Martin and Carol Channing-and certainly not Madonna, the bleached blonde rock star turned Broadway actress (ha ha) in the otherwise serious David Mamet drama, ”Speed-the-Plow.”
The creation of a Boston Conservatory of Music graduate and onetime performer named Gerard Alessandrini, ”Forbidden” began seven years ago as a dinner club act in an Upper West Side restaurant called Palsson`s. An instant success with trendies, it won Alessandrini-the show`s director and lyricist as well as creator-a Drama Desk and an Outer Critics Circle award.
”Forbidden” went dark last year, while it was rewritten, revamped, updated and expanded into a two-act, one-intermission full-scale revue. It was also moved from Palsson`s to Theater East, a house twice the size, on East 60th Street.
The new show`s opening was in September, and it has won this kind of boffo praise from the New York critics:
”Devastatingly funny. A brilliant lampoon . . . Satirical masterpiece . . . Delicious . . . Funnier than ever . . . Score`s a Bulls-Eye.”
Madonna should be so lucky. In ”Forbidden,” she`s played like a high school senior play reject stumbling through an audition while a fast-talking, foul-mouthed Mamet producer character carries on like Henry Higgins in ”My Fair Lady,” singing, ”I strain in vain to train Madonna`s brain.”
In ”More Miserables, the Sequel,” the show`s four characters circle on and off stage in parody of the original`s huge center-stage turntable. A dreadfully ragged Eponine, clutching a Gavroche Raggedy Andy doll, warbles:
”I dreamed a show in days gone by,
When all the scenery looked so pretty.
I didn`t sing a song-and die,
And all the costumes weren`t so gritty.”
Cameron MacIntosh, the producer of ”Les Miz,” ”Phantom” and ”Cats,” comes on stage as ”the Napoleon of Broadway,” hawking sweatshirts, Phantom masks, records and CDs.
Joel Grey, smeared with lipstick and drooling out his lyrics, is portrayed as a has-been who revives his career by reviving ”Cabaret.”
Similarly, a cat from ”Cats” and near-nude cast members of ”Oh Calcutta” relate how they finally found work putting on animal skins and stripping to their own.
Stephen Sondheim`s polysyllabic musical fairy tale, ”Into the Woods,”
is rendered as ”Into the Words.”
”Forbidden`s” four stars-Toni DiBuono, Roxie Lucas, David McDonald and Michael McGrath-are brilliant in the perfection of their imitations and utterly amazing in the whizzing speed of their character and costume changes. Backstage must resemble a submarine during a depth charge attack.
Some of the material is a trifle ”in.” Not everyone-even among those who`ve seen ”Phantom”-is aware of the trouble creator Andrew Lloyd Webber encountered casting his British wife as the female lead despite union restrictions against foreigners.
The feud between the theater-owning Schubert and Niederlander families also is a little obscure. Alessandrini admits he doesn`t even know how to spell Niederlander.
But the show is loaded with familiar legends and their well-known songs and routines. Anyone who doesn`t by this time know that Carol Channing starred in ”Hello, Dolly” and that Mary Martin flew as Peter Pan probably doesn`t get to New York much, anyway.
Some of the material is perhaps too campy-especially when Judy Garland returns from the dead. Among the expected trendies and Yuppies, the audience includes gay couples as well as Park Avenue types.
But that`s the idea.
”We strive for a balance,” the 34-year-old Alessandrini said in a later interview. ”We have something for everyone.”
He said the Broadway titans skewered by the revue have largely taken it in good humor, noting that MacIntosh gave them the rights to the ”Les Miz”
music without complaint.
”We`ve heard rumors that Joel Grey is unhappy,” Alessandrini said.
”But he hasn`t said anything in person.”
Despite the small size of the house, the cast is happy with the show. All but one has been with it for at least two seasons and Toni DiBuono has been appearing in it since the beginning.
Asked what he would do if ”Forbidden`s” success led to offers of a bigger theater and actual Broadway exposure, Alessandrini said, ”I`ve already had some, but I turned them down. It just wouldn`t work that way. It wouldn`t be the same.”
A shame in a way. One would love to see ”Forbidden Broadway” win a Tony. And one would really love to hear the acceptance speech.
