FORBIDDEN BROADWAY
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Though it’s hyped as a takeoff on the great and not-so-great stars, writers, and directors of Broadway, the real topic of this show is work–who’s got it, who doesn’t, and how it’s paid for. Underlying Alessandrini’s scattershot spoofs of well-known performers, writers, and directors is a basic sense of resentment: they’re successful and I’m not. Ironically, this attitude has made Alessandrini quite successful; his show has been running off-Broadway in various updated editions on and off for almost ten years and has spawned various touring and regional versions. This makes some sense: We’ve all felt jealous because someone else got the work, money, and acclaim we think we deserve, so just about everyone can identify with the snide tone that permeates Alessandrini’s heavy-handed mockery.
Forbidden Broadway’s concern with the bottom line on the chorus line is clear from the very first number, in which a pair of unemployed actors enviously wail “Who do they know?” as they consider their employed colleagues. Of course, things aren’t exactly easy for the folks who have a job either, and the plight of the performer is a theme that runs through several sketches. “Bring it down,” screeches a singer in Les Miserables, complaining about the high falsetto range of that show’s “Bring Him Home.” Choreographer Jerome Robbins, rehearsing a West Side Story sequence in his brilliant dance anthology Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, warns an effeminate dancer to “be butch, boy, real butch.” (The joke here is not institutionalized homophobia, but rather the discomfort felt by a swishy dancer trying to project a macho image.) And just in case you’re wondering why performers put up with all this hassle, Alessandrini delivers the answer in a spoof of Fiddler on the Roof in which “ambition” replaces “tradition” (never mind artistic aspiration) as the driving force in an actor’s life.
