A sure sign that Broadway is in post-COVID recovery mode is its willingness to make fun of itself. So the year-end arrival of the latest edition of Forbidden Broadway — the 40-plus-year-old commercial theater spoofathon — is both bracingly entertaining and a heartening indicator of health for The Great White Way.
With a too-short three-day stay at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, Forbidden Broadway is launching a national tour of its newest song-and-skit revue. Subtitled Merrily We Stole a Song, it covers the shows and stars of the past few seasons in New York. And unlike previous tours that avoided targeting the latest Broadway attractions, fearing that a Florida audience would not get the necessary references, this production is remarkably up-to-date with, for instance, sketches that poke fun at Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! and Audra McDonald in Gypsy.
As the show’s subtitle suggests, this production has a decided emphasis on the musicals of the late Stephen Sondheim, from recent revivals of Merrily We Roll Along and Company to such perennial favorites as Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George. Sondheim was known to be a big fan of Forbidden Broadway’s conceiver, director and parodist Gerard Alessandrini and would regularly send him the sheet music of his scores to facilitate their send-up. There is even an onstage representation of Young Steve, as the two wags from Back to the Future travel back in time to when the composer-lyricist-to-be first meets Oscar Hammerstein II and decides to devote his life to writing musicals.
As with all editions of Forbidden Broadway, not every comic bit is worth its weight in mirth, but the four-member ensemble often compensates with stellar mimickry. Big-voiced Jenny Lee Stern is a standout as Patti LuPone, belting out her 11 o’clock show stopper from Company, as is Chris Collins-Pisano channeling Daniel Radcliffe in a Merrily spoof, “Harry Potter, Inc.” Big-haired Nicole Vanessa Ortiz has fun as Audra McDonald as a too-classy Mama Rose in Gypsy and John Wascavage is a veritable chameleon impersonating the various Emcees of Cabaret through the ages, from Joel Grey to Eddie Redmayne.
The 90-minute intermissionless show kicks off well with a faux usher (Stern) inching through the audience, singing “Sit Down, You’re Blockin’ the Aisle” to a tune from Guys & Dolls. The cast then sprints through jaundice-eyed looks at such shows as Hell’s Kitchen, The (not so) Great Gatsby, Suffs, Six and & Juliet, to name just a few.
It would, of course, take thousands of dollars and dozens of hours of your life to see all the productions that Merrily We Stole a Song ribs. So save yourself the money and time and end the year with Forbidden Broadway instead.
FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG, Kravis Center Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, Through Sunday, Dec. 29. 561-832-7469.