The first main number in this uneven parody of the shows and stars of musical theatre is a spoof of Gypsy’s ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ rendered as ‘Everyone Thinks They’re A Critic’, which may be an attempt to put off us theatre bloggers, but no such luck!
‘Forbidden Broadway’ has been running in various guises for the past thirty years, with sections coming in and out depending on audience taste. Now, I love my musicals, but I also love a good mickey take, and the ‘Les Miserables’ section of this show is one of the best I have seen, from the plaintive lament of Valjean to ‘Bring It Down’ (of the very high-pitched ‘Bring Him Home’, which must be the bane of every singer’s life since the character was created by the wonderful Colm Wilkinson) to a mischievous nod at the revolving stage, a bored Eponine ‘On My Phone’, and the Thenardiers bemoaning their lack of funny lines!
The rest of the show moves between spot-on send-ups of Broadway stars like Bernadette Peters (croaking through ‘See Me On A Monday, Please’), Angela Lansbury (not liking the modern Broadway in ‘I Don’t Want To Go’ – which started life as ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ in Dear World), Mandy Patinkin, Hugh Jackman, Idina Merkel, and – less successful – Kristin Chenoweth (not that well known here) and a tiny Elaine Paige in Toulouse Lautrec mode. I felt the ‘Miss Saigon’ section was a little too cruel (especially The Producer) although the little helicopter is fun, while the section on ‘Once’ starts well but goes on too long.
Filling in the gaps are a nice piece on ‘Circle of Mice’ in ‘The Lion King’ lampooning the House of Mouse, Elphaba’s ‘Defying Subtlety’ in ‘Wicked’, a nip at the creators of ‘The Book of Morons/Mormon’, and a fun (but perhaps best if you have a long memory) competitive duet between Chita (Rivera) and Rita (Moreno) to the tune of ‘America’ in ‘West Side Story’. There’s also a dig at ‘Liza One Note’ (rather unkind to the still-talented Liza Minnelli), and a very wicked and wonderful send-up of Sondheim’s wordplay in ‘Into The Words’.
I would cut the running time back a bit to stop the longueurs and padding that plague part of this show, but the five performers undoubtedly work hard – music director/pianist Joel Fram, Damian Humbley (Valjean/Cameron) and Ben Lewis, Christina Bianco (Peters), and the understudy Laura Tebbutt (Lansbury/Elphaba) standing in for Anne-Jane Casey.
‘Forbidden Broadway’ runs for one more week at the Vaudeville.