Gerard Alessandrini - Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act!: The Unoriginal Cast Recording, Volume 5 (1998 New York Cast)

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Music reviews of Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act!: The Unoriginal Cast Recording, Volume 5 (1998 New York Cast)

Music Review: Forbidden Broadway at its best
Rating: 5 Stars

"Stop right there! That lyric is polluted and that gesture is obscene. I order you to stop immediately!"

"Just a minute, please! Who are you!?"

"I am mayor Rudolph Giuliani! And you're in violation of New York City's new zoning laws for adult entertainment. No parody lyrics within fifty feet of any church or school....From now on I don't want to see anything on this stage dirtier than....than.... Mary Poppins!"

When the time for FB5 came around, Gerard Alessandrini had established himself as a terrific parody writer, and the show itself had become near and dear to theatre-lovers' hearts. Alessandrini's level of comfort with pushing Broadway's buttons shows, and contributes to perhaps the funniest volume in the seven-volume collection.

The show couldn't have come at a better time. As Alessandrini writes in the booklet, while Mayor Giuliani was cleaning up Broadway's seedier aspects outside, inside Broadway was becoming more and more raunchier with shows like Cabaret and Chicago. Not only that, but it also came in the wake of the 1998 Tonys with the fierce competition between Lion King and Ragtime. All four aformentioned shows, by the way, have hillarious parodies, knocking everything from Natasha Richardson, Ann Reinking, Julie Taymor, and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Special attention is payed to the sure-fire flops; has anyone heard of Swan Lake besides Bryan Batt and Edward Staudenmayer ripping apart the allegro moderato and waltz? Cult-classics like Jekyll and Hyde fall prey, as does The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which makes for an amazing parody of a play.

Ah yes, the actors. I don't think I've laughed harder than I did during Super-Frantic-Hyper-Active-Self-Indulgent-Mandy, and Ann Miller's "I'm Still Weird" couldn't have been more perfectly performed. Let's not forget the long-runners, either. Andrew Lloyd Superstar gets his due, and Les Miserables gets it once again (would it be a Forbidden Broadway without giving the now-longest-running show on Broadway a swift kick in the derriere?).

Another highlight has got to be the Sound of Music in Cabaret segment, and looking at the picture from it in the booklet makes me laugh even harder.

A great introduction to Forbidden Broadway, and a must for any theatre afficionado, Cleans Up its Act is guaranteed to please, even if it's not as clean as Mary Poppins.

Description of Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act!: The Unoriginal Cast Recording, Volume 5 (1998 New York Cast)

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