FORBIDDEN BROADWAY at Stageworks in Hudson
Carole Osterink
ccSCOOP Review
07-06-09 - 5:30 p.m. - Like the New York City expats who say they will let their New Yorker subscriptions lapse when they stop getting the jokes in the cartoons, I worried that, after almost two decades of not living in Manhattan and never being all that much of a Broadway theatergoer, I wouldn’t get the jokes in Forbidden Broadway. No need to worry on that account. You’d have to have been living in cave outside Velva, North Dakota, for the past forty years, without access to TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, or the Internet, for the humor of Forbidden Broadway to elude you.
The main theme of Forbidden Broadway is that there’s nothing new on Broadway. The show pokes fun at the revivals, comebacks, and long-running shows. Molly Parker-Myers, got up as the eternally little orphan Annie, sings bravely, “I’m thirty years old tomorrow.” Molly Marie Walsh, red lipstick smeared lavishly around her mouth, takes the stage as Carol Channing for yet another revival of Hello, Dolly! The whole ensemble, dressed as the cast of Les Miserables, boasts in song that theirs is “the only Broadway show with our own pension plan.” The audience for these classic shows takes a ribbing, too. Dressed as characters from Oklahoma!, the ensemble celebrates the folks who “knows what they likes and likes what they knows.” |
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Stephen Joshua Thompson, Molly Parker-Myers, Kurt Perry (seated), Molly Marie Walsh, and Billy Kimmel |
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The show parodies the Disney invasion of Broadway—“the Circle of Mice”—and pokes fun at musical theater as tourist attraction. Stephen Joshua Thompson assumes the character of producer Cameron Mackintosh to poke fun at the merchandizing of Broadway, enticing the audience by revealing the lining of his cloak hung with Broadway trinkets and souvenirs and reveling in the notion that it costs “$100 to get in and $100 to get out” of one of his productions. There’s also a segment in which Walsh as Julie Andrews and Parker-Myers as Ethel Merman make fun of modern-day stage amplification.
My favorite segment of Forbidden Broadway was a parody of “America” from West Side Story which can be best characterized as “dualing Anitas.” Dressed identically, Walsh, as Chita Rivera who played Anita in the original 1957 Broadway production, and Parker-Myers, as Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the 1961 film version, sing lyrics that exploit to the hilt the Chita-Rita-Anita rhyme and do a Latin-inspired dance with much flamenco-style foot stomping, skirt flicking, and head tossing, each trying to out-sing and out-dance the other to prove she is the true Anita.
As always. Stageworks has assembled some very impressive talent for this production. The ensemble—Billy Kimmel, who also directed and did the musical staging, Molly Parker-Myers, Stephen Joshua Thompson, and Molly Marie Walsh—and pianist Kurt Perry, who provided musical direction, as well as the accompaniment for the entire performance, achieve a level of energy and versatility that is truly awesome. Also amazing are the rapid-fire transformations of characters, achieved with a costume change, a makeup adjustment, and a different wig. The importance of wigs to creating the illusion is acknowledged by the fact that the wig stylist, Stephen Joshua Thompson, who is also one of the players, is listed on the front of the preview program. But the transformations aren’t all about external trappings. These actors really know how to nail a character. When Walsh takes the stage as Barbra Streisand, nothing about the costume, wig, or makeup is spot on, but it is the accent, the gestures, the way she holds the microphone that subtly evoke the famous singer.
Forbidden Broadway was created and written by Gerard Alessandrini. There are six more performances—Wednesday, July 8 through Sunday, July 12—at Stageworks.
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