Anyone who has ever walked past the London theatre where Cats is in its thousandth year and wondered what goes on in there needs to see Forbidden Broadway. So do those who suspect musical theatre will never recover from Andrew Lloyd Webber. A collection of song, sarcasm and wigs that has been running in New York for longer than some of the shows it parodies, it subjects Broadway and the West End to a pitiless and overdue send-up.
Gerard Alessandrini wrote it as an "affectionate" rebuke to the ego-fest the musical has become, and you don't need to have seen Les Mis to get his point. Nor must you have witnessed Streisand, Minnelli or Brightman in full diva flow to cheer on Christine Pedi and Sophie-Louise Dann's cruel impersonations.
They, and Mark O'Malley and Alistair Robins, have the audience's approval from the moment "Brightman" (Dann) opens the show by trilling, "Time I said goodbye, my welcome is wearing thin" to the tune of The Music of the Night. By the way, how did she come by such an accurate imitation of that goatly gaze?
The formula consists of rapid-fire costume changes and altered lyrics wherein "Any dream will do" becomes "Any hunk will do", and a finger-snapping version of Grease's You're the One That I Want revolves around the line "Retro kitsch will make you rich".
If the idea of pairing "funny" lyrics with familiar tunes doesn't seem especially sophisticated, you're right. It can also be said that Alessandrini's adaptation of other people's ideas for his own ends makes him unfit to groom the saintly Lloyd Webber's eyebrows. It's titteringly funny, though. Discovering that "Ronan Keating" rhymes with "fame is fleeting" can't have taxed Alessandrini much - but if that's the case, why didn't someone else do it first?
Nearly all his victims are chosen on merit. Stephen Sondheim gets what's coming to him for too-complex lyrics, and a brassy Ethel Merman (played by New Yorker Pedi, the show's star) takes the Phantom of the Opera down a richly deserved peg by ripping off his mask and yodelling, "What're you, Lon Chaney or something?"
But it's Pedi's theatrical Liza Minnelli that dominates the show. "Do you know who my mother was?" she breathlessly asks, till someone in the audience appeases her with, "Judy Garland?" Had the Pet Shop Boys seen this before producing her album ...
Although it boils down to one long in-joke (apparently, the New York production is regularly updated), Forbidden Broadway's breakneck humour rarely palls. Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but it's also the best for making egos wither on the spot.
