AS Washington theatergoers enter the well-mannered Marquee Lounge at the Omni Shoreham Hotel to see five players do a club-act indictment of hit musicals called Forbidden Broadway, they are expected to partake in a rather lush evening, sitting in pretty chairs, and also to submit to drink minimums. This atmosphere might be fine for a high brow collection of Noel Coward songs, but it seems ironically inappropriate to house a funny, spiteful little musical with an underlying theme concerning the dismay of off-broadway actors with the kind of thing that sells on Broadway. Now maybe the producers mean these surroundings to be the ultimate parody of the Broadway glitz we expect, but let us remain suspect.
D.C.'s version of Forbidden Broadway cuts out many of the in New York theater jokes and skits and goes decidedly streamline for us mainstream folks. Mainly old standby numbers from musicals that we now see in community theater here are parodied, and to boot, we get an approximate likeness of the original performer. This is probably a marketable concession, but creator Gerard Allessandrini, insists on keeping some of the inside jokes in, and the performers feel compelled to point, indicate, and generally do what they can to cue us to get said joke. (There are a few feeble attempts to include local references to D.C.'s Peter Sellars and the American National Theater.)
At times "Forbidden" seems to pit the occasional theatergoer against the diehard theater type. Act II's opening must be frustrating to the players who do some funny bits as auditionees which play to a thud before an audience who does not feel the need to yelp with appreciation at the stereotypes they present. It seems so much better when we all understand at once, as we do with the Carol Channing rib. This section plays particularly well due to the fact that it is presented as a mini-play with Dolly gesticulating part of her performance in mime as we hear the chorus boys singing their thoughts: "Oh no, Carol/Oh, no, no, Carol/Don't you dare do 'Hello Dolly' once again…"
Again, while the Man of La Mancha parody is well-received ("…to sing the impossible song") Andrew Lloyd-Weber's Cats routine about an actor remembering a time when "actors played humans" misses with its big punchline, "Next, I play a caboose." The question which comes to mind at this point is whether this is a reference to the newer Weber musical about trains in which the actors wear roller skates. Critics all over the United States have lavished praise on "Forbidden"--almost unanimously--and this can only be attributed to the fact that the show seems to be written as a joke for them.
The visual jokes along with ridiculous lyrics to the popular show songs do bring laughter, and one really cannot go wrong in buying a ticket to take part in this frolic. Every road show musical in recent memory will be served up and chewed, and it will be given a presentation with extreme wigs and overt costume properties to heighten (or, at times, hide) the impersonations of the players. The costumes, however, are excessive and look overly manicured (rather like the Marquee Lounge itself) and would probably be a lot more fun if they were indeed more tossed together. The road companies of Forbidden Broadway seem to forget that the original production began in little bars with whatever props and costumes could be found to present a likeness of a star--the point being that only an approximation is needed. The new production of the show loses sight of the fun in this, being so slick and
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