Review - Forbidden Broadway Goes To Rehab & The Tempest

"Only the great deserve the darts of satire," proclaimed an advertisement for the New York leg of the Bolshoi Ballet Company's 1936 American tour, a classy reply to the spoofing they were receiving from George Balanchine's dance piece La Princesse Zenobia, a highlight of George Abbott and Rodgers and Hart's Broadway hit On Your Toes.

Maybe that's one of the reasons Gerard Alessandrini, whose contributions to the intimate satirical musical revue have surely by now earned him a well-respected place beside the likes of Julius Monk and Ben Bagley, has decided to close his frequently updated jabbing at theatre's elite on the twenty-seventh anniversary of its Jan. 15, 1982 premiere.

After all, when Forbidden Broadway first hit the stage of Palsson's on W. 72nd Street people like Cy Coleman, Comden and Green, Tommy Tune, Jerry Herman and Harold Prince, just to name a few, all had great successes ahead of them. Stunt casting was Linda Ronstadt having a decently legit soprano in The Pirates of Penzance, you had to get off the 1 train at Christopher Street for camp and the biggest jukebox musical to ever play Broadway was Do Re Mi.

Now, near the end of Forbidden Broadway Goes To Rehab, a disheartened Stephen Sondheim, who has also had spoof-worthy success during the Alessandriniera, sings of the current Broadway landscape, "Shot by shot / Putting up with rivals / Now what's hot / Has to be a kiddie show to pay / Or they do a Sir Lloyd Webber freak show / Everything is cardboard or cliché."

And though Dot, Sweeny and Red Riding Hood try and convince him to, "Just keep moving on," by the time the talented cast is taking bows it's abundantly clear why the show's creator/writer is not heeding their advice; there is very little greatness around to satirize. His takes on Mary Poppins ("Feed The Burbs"), Young Frankenstein ("Putting Up With Shit"), Hairspray ("You Can't Stop The Camp"), Jersey Boys ("Big Shows Get By") and The Lion King ("Circle of Mice") echo a sentiment that has been dominating the show in recent years; that the cornerstone of culture and cleverness has been dumbed down to into a self-spoofing theme park.

But of course, that's definitely not to say that the new Forbidden Broadway isn't worth another visit or two before the last laugh is guffawed. The cast is winning, those costumes by the late Alvin Colt (with additional ones by David Moyer) still get laughs before a lyric is uttered and the Alessandrini wit (he also co-directs with Phillip George) still provides one of the smartest and funniest evenings a musical theatre lover can ask for. Forbidden Broadway Goes To Rehab only suffers when compared with past editions that had richer soil from which to grow.

Newer song parodies are hatched from In The Heights, which is pushed as a Latino show for white people, A Tale of Two Cities ("You thought the British op'rical was hell? / But try to sing this re-tread Scarlet Pimpernell.") and South Pacific (sung to recorded full orchestrations) while August: Osage County is reimaged as a boxing match between its two leading characters. And while he mocks [title of show]'s use of profanity ("They say the "f-word" 44 times in [title of show] for no good reason... It's actually considered smart and witty today.") he seems to defend Spring Awakening's use of the word in "Totally Bleeped."

As always, Gerard Alessandrini assembles an exceptional cast, under the music direction of on-stage pianist David Caldwell, that excels both vocally and in mimicry. "Glitter and Be Glib," with Christina Bianco remarkably matching Kristin Chenoweth in soprano trills and perky squeaks, is bound to remembered as one of the series' classics. Her appearances as Kerry Butler, Bernadette Peters and Kelli O'Hara, among others are done with chameleon-like accuracy.

As Patti LuPone, Gina Kreiezmar makes Mt. Everest's peak from the side of her upper lip even while belting out and her manic impersonation of Ms. Minnelli is reason enough to bring back the old standby, "Liza One-Note."

Michael West does a terrific job in copying James Barbour's vocal dramatics and Jared Bradshaw, in perhaps the evening's cleverest bit, is a stitch as Equus' Daniel Radcliffe going from shy adolescent to confident stripper in "Let Me Enter Naked."

Like the odd emptiness the city has when The Fantasticks isn't around, the absence of Forbidden Broadway without the promise of a new one on the way leaves us without a reliable old pal we know we can visit from time to time whenever we're in need of a good laugh. Perhaps Gerard Alessandrini will see fit to bring us a new entry once the Broadway climate is worth spoofing again. And wouldn't that be nice for several reasons.

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Oh, good God, if Mandy Patinkin really wanted to be Caliban so badly he should have just signed to play the role instead of snarling, snorting and growling his way through Prospero in Brian Kulick's beautifully conceived but poorly acted production of Shakespeare's The Tempest at the Classic Stage Company.

To give him his due, the actor does pop in a few moments of humanity as the disposed Duke of Milan who uses sorcery to whip up a storm that shipwrecks the brother who betrayed him onto his island home. And some legitimate humor, too. That is, aside from his frequent forays into indecipherability where he's crunching his face into knot while rapidly sneering out lines and slicing the air surrounding him to bits with physical actions more suited for a martial arts competition.

At least he gives us some distraction from the passionless pairing of Elisabeth Waterston, who speaks in dull, muffled tones as Prospero's daughter Miranda, and Stark Sands, who gives a flat and emotionless portrayal of her new love, Ferdinand.

Shakespeare describes Prospero's "savage" slave Caliban as deformed and misshapen. In this production that means has the physique of an Alvin Ailey dancer. Using a sometimes too thick to be understood Jamaican accent for the role, Nyambi Nyambi is blissfully soft-spoken in his scenes with Tony Torn and Steven Rattazzi, who play the clown roles of Trinculo and Stefano as though they've been instructed that loud is funny and louder is just hysterical.

Angel Desai's rather docile, violin-playing Ariel has her moments of charm and the rest of the company all do fine work in smaller roles, particularly Nana Mensah and Bhavesh Patel as spirits whom Kulick utilizes well in controlling the actions of the island's new crop of human visitors.

Simplicity looks lovely in Jian Jung's set, a stageful of white sand (inexplicably swept away during intermission) beneath a tilting flat canvas representing the sky, lit with soft, dreamlike tones by Brian H. Scott. Platforms emerging from the upstage wall and floor to ceiling poles provide an impish playing area for the three spirits. Theirs are the only magical contributions to this potentially ethereal production.

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