Review: Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song Isn’t Holding Back – And It’s Glorious

Forbidden Broadway is back, this time hitching a ride on Back to the Future’s Delorean to revisit some of Broadway’s best and brightest eras, stacking them up against the theater landscape of today (in which Merrily We Roll Along is finally a hit.)

Writer-director Gerard Alessandrini’s parody revue, in this edition dubbed Merrily We Stole A Song, is punchier than ever, taking an unforgiving look at the musicals of the past several Broadway seasons. With soaring ticket prices, pestilential pop scores, and counterintuitively “reimagined” revivals, Alessandrini and Forbidden ensemble have ample material for satire.

They do not flinch in posing questions such as: Is $600 stageside dining really luxurious when you’re close enough to taste the sweat and tears of the performers? Do we actually like Lincoln Center Theater productions, or do we just like how tasteful and prestigious they make us feel? And exactly how much of the plot of Hell’s Kitchen is actually real? (Apparently, Keys’s piano teacher is very much alive in real life — awkward!)

This iteration of Forbidden Broadway opens with an “usher” stepping into the audience to remind us the usual — turn off your godforsaken phone and if you have to pee, it’s already too late — cleverly performed as “Sit Down, You’re Blocking the Aisle.”

Within the first 15 minutes of the show, the audience is uproarious in its laughter, as the sleep demon that has haunted our nightmares for the past several months appears onstage — a certain ginger Emcee donning a party hat. For the haters, this moment of catharsis is worth the ticket price alone. Danny Hayward’s conjuring of the controversial portrayal is preceded by an uncanny embodiment of both Joel Grey and Alan Cumming’s respective Emcees, the former emphasized by frequent exaggerated eye-blinking that, with each rapidly shuttered eyelid, had the audience bent in half, and the latter delivering both eccentric hand movements and a deeper, honeyed voice that was both funny in its precise mimicry, and just pleasant to listen to.

The talent of the ensemble, at times, exceeds the humor of the show, with polished voices across the board, spot-on comedic timing, and occasional vocal gymnastics (looking at you, Jenny Lee Stern) that render it bewildering how exceptional these performers are even when they’re cracking jokes. Danny Hayward and Chris Collins-Pisano are a dream team in their shared farces onstage, Nicole Vanessa Ortiz nails her takes on Six and & Juliet, and, as stated parenthetically above, Stern certainly knows how to channel that Broadway diva power — even when she’s not playing Bernadette Peters.

They are led on a journey to the past with “Roger Bart” and “Casey Likes,” who rewind “back in time to Broadway’s prime” and encounter a young Stephen Sondheim. The first Forbidden Broadway since the theater giant’s passing, Sondheim’s overarching impact on the Broadway canon is heartfully emphasized throughout the plot, expressing gratitude that he didn’t go into something like automotive design, as there’s “much more money in that than musical theater.” This statement, of course, easily earns a knowing laugh.

This edition of Forbidden Broadway is as refreshing as it is hysterical. In one scene, “Roger Bart” flips through a poster-sized notepad explaining the math of derivative musicals — for instance West Side Story + Grease = The Outsiders.

Alessandrini’s lyrics sting in the best way. On The Great Gatsby, our leading man (Hayward) sings, “My name is Jeremy Jordan…Jordan is bored in this role.” A caricature of Hillary Clinton (Stern) croons to Shaina Taub: “Yes, I’d love to produce your brilliant mess.” And in one for the rhyming dictionary, the snooty patrons of Lincoln Center sing, “But you know, art should hurt, and more, be a chore, and bore, and make your tuchus sore.”

Though snarky at times, Forbidden Broadway invites us to laugh with, not at, the highs and lows of the industry (well, unless your name is Eddie Redmayne), and in doing so, offers a more lighthearted avenue for critique, cleverly highlighting where there is room to improve…and softening the blows with laughter as a cushion. So, place your bids on which unspoken hot takes you’ve secretly kept to yourself will finally be set free through song and rejoice in Forbidden Broadway’s tough love on the past four years of musical theater.