FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG—Segerstrom Center for the Arts Samueli Theater
- TheShowReport
- May 15
- 4 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Gerard Alessandrini’s newest unpolished FORBIDDEN BROADWAY edition is uproarious and outrageous with a powerhouse cast of superstars, and the spoofs are so far down 42nd Street they’re almost in the Hudson River.
MAY 15—COSTA MESA
The latest touring edition of Gerard Alessandrini’s FORBIDDEN BROADWAY, this one entitled MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG, presented by special arrangement with John Freedman & Harriet Yellin, officially opened at Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ fabulous Samueli Theater on Thursday, and will be playing for only three days, taking its final Orange County bow Saturday evening at 7PM.
The show is being presented in a dinner theater atmosphere (albeit without the dinner) complete with lamplight table service and various snacks and drinks available from the lobby.
Conceived, written, and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, the FORBIDDEN BROADWAY series is now 42 years old. Moving at a dizzying pace, the installment MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG is a 90-minute revue of parody songs spoofing the last few years of New York theatre: new musicals, revivals, jukebox musicals, the Tony Awards, and musical movie adaptations.
Theatre fans will no doubt pick up on the adulation, roasts and impersonations of stage stars like Pattie LuPone and Bernadette Peters, the lambasting of the Tony Awards at Lincoln Center, the targeting of shows like the hyper-brooding “The Outsiders” and spoofs on the revivals of Stephen Sondheim works. One of the most memorable skits features the evolution of the Emcee in various productions of “Cabaret” (from Joel Grey in 1966 to Alan Cumming in 1998 to Eddie Redmayne today — as they grow progressively more vulgar and more unpleasant). Other sketches include “The Great Gatsby,” “Stereophonic,” “Water for Elephants,” the recent reimagining of "Cats" into “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” and the low-budget choreography of “Suffs,” all with hilarious results.
The cast of four includes Chris Collins-Pisano (Nat’l Tour: “Elf,” “Forbidden Sondheim”), Katheryne Penny (“Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song,” “Diana, a New Musical”), Jenny Lee Stern (“Forbidden Broadway: Alive & Kicking,” “Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation”) and Miles Davis Tillman (Nat’l Tour: “The SpongeBob Musical,” “Spamilton: An American Parody”). Music Director/Orchestrator/Conductor for the Forbidden Broadway, Forbidden Hollywood, and Forbidden Christmas series, Catherine Stornetta (Cable ACE-award winning documentary “Christa McAuliffe, Teacher in Space,” Arranger/Composer for Unione Parke Singers: “Reindeer Games and Seasons”) is on the piano.
In most cases, a typical FORBIDDEN BROADWAY number follows the same formula: one of the show’s four performers comes out and within their first few lines directly states who they’ll be lampooning. Then, over the course of a song that’s usually much too long, the performer names one superficial reason their target is bad and repeats it over and over. Ben Platt has no charisma, Bernadette Peters is old but still playing sexy, Daniel Radcliffe is just doing Harry Potter — you get the picture. There’s a segment which posits the unlikely idea that Audra McDonald is haunted by the ghosts of previous Roses in the 2024 revival of “Gypsy” (“Merman’s gotta let go!”). The observations aren’t particularly clever and frequently not even accurate — but they are all sidesplitting.
Some of the numbers, however, actually have perspective and arc. Example: though it overstays its welcome, the scene between young Alicia Keys and her very much alive piano teacher is an amusing take on “Hell’s Kitchen.” But the vast majority of the parodies are just witty, funny takes and liberal sendups, roasting staple artists in the industry like Ariana DeBose or Jeremy Jordan.
The show has spawned over two dozen iterations, keeping Alessandrini busy continually updating the material to reflect Broadway’s current slate, but a few evergreens remain. For his work on FORBIDDEN BROADWAY in all its forms, Alessandrini and the show received a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre and several Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, two Lucille Lortel Awards and the Drama League Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 1991, he co-wrote, directed and performed in the television parody “Masterpiece Tonight,” a satirical salute to the 20th anniversary of “Masterpiece Theatre.” In 1995, some of his sketches were featured in Carol Burnett’s CBS special, “Men, Movies and Carol.” He has also written comedy specials for Bob Hope and Angela Lansbury for NBC. In 2011, he co-created the musical comedy, “The Nutcracker and I,” with music by Tchaikovsky, and in 2016, Alessandrini wrote the revue “Spamilton,” which parodies “Hamilton” and caricatures various Broadway stars.
The production also features musical direction by Fred Barton, choreography by Gerry McIntyre, graphics/onstage projection design by Glenn Bassett, costume design by Dustin Cross, wig design by Ian Joseph, special production arrangement by John Freedman & Harriet Yellin, production stage management by Brian Westmoreland, and casting by Michael Cassara.
The soaring voices and uncanny, caricaturist impressions of luminaries performed by the wickedly talented company is some of the best topical satire anywhere, which is mostly accompanied with nothing more than playful shoestring props and costumes. The quartet's impersonations are, if not always dead-on, never less than close enough, and some are quite uncanny. I'll long treasure Ms. Stern's Patti LuPone in one of Ian Joseph's always-impeccable wigs, snarling, "And here's to the bitches who mock/ Every little bit/ And if people take sneaky pictures or talk/ Watch me throw a fit!"
There's even a "Back to the Future"-esque time journey in set designer Glenn Bassett's cutout DeLorean as Roger Bart (Mr. Collins-Pisano) and Casey Likes (Mr. Tillman) visits Oscar Hammerstein II's Doylestown farm in 1945 and meets a teenage Stephen Sondheim (Ms. Stern), with catastrophic results for the future of musical theatre. Actually, it’s a springboard for a whole lotta Sondheim, including some intricate parodies of songs like "Old Friends" and "Franklin Shepard, Inc."
So, whether you are a seasoned theatre-goer or new to it all, the Tony Honorary Award winning FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG is your one-stop ticket to non-stop laughs: a hip and fresh view of theatre’s tried and true that will leave you begging for more!
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report