If You Want to Laugh Inexpensively...Try Forbidden Broadway -A taste of all the Broadway shows in one two-hour giggler.
Recognize "I Couldn't Hit the Note" or "I Dreamed a Show" or "Old Revivals" ? These are title songs listed in the playbill for "Forbidden Broadway," the wacky musical compilation of song parodies written by Gerard Alessandrini and assembled in a two-hour show that leaves you laughing from the first minute to the last as you make your way out of the Douglas Fairbanks theater and up West 42nd Street. If the titles of the songs listed here do not make sense, try "I Could Have Danced All Night," from "My Fair Lady," or "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables," or "Oklahoma," the title song of the number one revival currently playing on Broadway. "Forbidden Broadway's" is full of these wickedly funny, often scathing lyrics - the format Alessandrini had developed over twenty years ago. Clever direction and choreography from Philip George and Alessandrini have devised to make four performers look like twenty-four. Changing from Chita Rivera to Julie Andrews to Liza Minnelli in a matter of minutes (two or three at the most) or from Mandy Patinkin to Michael Crawford to Stephen Sondheim is the Herculean task each company member must perfect.
"It's not a great tragedy if the proper earrings don't get on," Donna English, a current member of the cast and a Julie Andrews look-alike and sing-alike actress, said in a recent interview for DANCER magazine. "What is important is getting the character established. If you have two minutes to get the whole sketch done you can't worry about the wrong jewelry," English explained. In the opening number, a parody of "Chicago," the slight and graceful English swings her hips, and spreads her fingers in a typical Fosse style. Then she is off in a blink of the eye to change, listening backstage to the performer on stage, gauging by his lyrics how much time she has to rip off the black skimpy shift dress and dive into the next get-up, maybe the country clothes of "Oklahoma" or the neck brace and headdress for the "Lion King." She pillories director Julie Taymor in "We Hate You Julie Taymor" for creating the heavy headpieces and costuming the "Lion King" cast must wear every night.
Sitting with Donna in the dressing room between matinee and evening shows she seems completely relaxed showing me the order list of the numbers she sings eight times a week. Her costumes are stacked up on a chair in reverse order -- the wigs laid out and labeled , the bracelet and the earrings --- everything filed in precise and complete order. "It may look like we each have a dresser," she notes, "but unfortunately no budget for that. Everything is Velcro, and all the changes are choreographed meticulously. We have one dresser back stage who handles the four of us. We rip off our costumes, throw them in a pile and she does the rest."
The purpose of "Forbidden Broadway" is to make light of everything the real performers in the real shows have to take seriously. One performer may have ten or twelve songs to sing, act, even dance a little, but the important aspect is always the lyric and grabbing the character of the role. English recalls at her audition she was asked to do impressions. "I said, no - flat out because impressions are not my thing. However I have a good ear and I study pictures of my character, sometimes go to the show to key into the mannerisms of the character, find one essential phrase that defines that character and run with it, literally run with it."
How does a performer who must play so many characters keep up the pace? Donna flashes a "Julie Andrews" smile and answers with one word - fun! "We have so much fun backstage, all of us are a little silly, raunchy, offbeat - if we have one diva it can bring the whole company down. Our preparation is playful and full of laughs. It has to be because that is what the show is all about." The show is also all about enunciating the words - the biting lyrics that are more important than the character who says them. Try "Somewhat Overindulgent," a Mandy Patinkin exaggeration to the tune of "Over The Rainbow." Got to get those syllables out or the number is a flop.
Fun seems to be the key word on both sides of the footlights at "Forbidden Broadway." "Just think," Donna mused, "I get to sing songs and be characters I could never be in any other show. I'm not a dancer, how could I ever get to do Bebe Neuwirth's role in 'Chicago?' I couldn't, except in 'Forbidden Broadway.'" •