According to actor John Malkovich, the theatre needs starving artists to survive. But New York’s gentrification and Broadway’s fascination with blockbuster hits has left little room for small, indpendent productions and the unknowns who bring them to life.
Broadway’s big-bucks musicals and the stars and patrons who fuel are the main attraction behind “Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit,” the Miracle Productions entry now playing at Theatre in Old Town. It is this company’s only non-New York run.
By now, you’d figure creator and writer Gerard Alessandrini would have it down “” the show has been updated each season since its maiden voyage in 1982 as Alessandrini’s nightclub act, and he was crafty enough to parlay the piece into an annually updated slam of Broadway’s biggest hits, winning 11 awards along the way.
For the most part, co-directors Alessandrini and Phillip George do have this cast (comprised of Jared Bradshaw, Valerie Fagan, Kevin B. McGlynn and Jeanne Montano) running on all cylinders, although the logistics are sometimes compromised beyond the cast’s control. The introductory number is cute, but tentative and scattershot, and as such, the players have trouble cleanly setting the tone. From there, we’re treated to spoofs on 21 musicals and their top-name talent, with McGlynn skewering Robert Goulet in one of the evening’s funnier installments. Goulet, 72, enjoys some of the most solid staying power in Broadway history “” exactly why this show finds his failings such a juicy target.
And watch Montano fracture a series of Frankie Valli tunes from “Jersey Boys,” the Four Seasons bioplay that got its start at the La Jolla Playhouse. As soon as she finishes that end, she obliterates the classic “Imagine” out of the short-lived musical “Lennon.” Montano is the highlight among a litany of other highlights (“Oh, What a Terrible Genre,” which Bradshaw sings to the tune of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from “Oklahoma!”; “Welcome to the Tonys,” a Montano-sung rip of “Welcome to the ’60s” from “Hairspray”). Wonderful stuff.
But as in the “Hairspray” knock-off, many of the songs contain material a little far afield for non-New York audiences. Not everybody around here knows, for example, that Bebe Neuwirth (Fagan) played the central character in “Chicago,” yet Fagan is directed as though Neuwirth is a household name (she’s very good, but she’s hardly an institution). And it’s a cinch that unless they saw it here last December, the patrons won’t immediately connect the name Rafreaky (McGlynn) with Rafiki, the spiritual adviser from “The Lion King.”
And what’s up with the absence of references to the vaunted “Brooklyn: The Musical” from 2004? What about 2001’s “The Producers,” the biggest Tony winner in Broadway history (it snagged 12 awards and was nominated for 14)? Nary a peep here on the Mel Brooks megahit, an extortion caper and send-up of the Third Reich, featuring a flamingly gay Adolf Hitler. Maybe Alessandrini figured it didn’t make sense to spoof a spoof.
At any rate, this show is making a statement whether it knows it or not. The fun and frivolity puts a happy face on Broadway’s decline “” musicals are the fare of choice there, and in dangerously heavy quantity. Thus, they make conspicuous targets like never before, and this cast exploits the material accordingly. This is a highly physical and sometimes pee-your-pants-funny romp through an obsolescent monument to American culture, its in-jokes and conspicuous exclusions notwithstanding.
This review is based on the performance of April 7. “Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit” runs through June 4 at the Theatre in Old Town, 4040 Twiggs St. Tickets are $31 to $43 and are available at (619) 688-2494 or at www.theatreinoldtown.com.