Forbidden Broadway: Alive & Kicking

47th Street Theatre, New York

(212) 239-6200

“If you really love Broadway like I do,” you’ll adore this show that gives it a swift kick in the pants, said Michael Musto in The Village Voice. That’s what Gerard Alessandrini has been doing for three decades with his series of revues mocking the excesses of New York theater. The latest installation, which marks Forbidden Broadway’s 30th anniversary, is actually the first in three years—because Alessandrini said he wouldn’t write another until there were enough shows worth lampooning. Clearly, that time has come. From the “corny pap” of Newsies to Spider-Man’s litany of accidents and lawsuits, recent Broadway seasons have supplied a bumper crop of material.

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Maybe that’s why this edition is “the meanest I can recall,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. Alive & Kicking “not only tickles but also pierces the Achilles’ heels” of both newcomers and stage veterans. Marcus Stevens deftly skewers Matthew Broderick’s “lazy, what-me-worry dancing and dopey nasal singing” in Nice Work If You Can Get It. And in an inspired spoof of the Tony-winning Once, Jenny Lee Stern and Scott Richard Foster dissect the rambling preciousness of the show’s lyrics—“Am I wailing or just a whale as it dies? / Is it heartbreak or heartburn from Irish french fries?” The performers “replicate their subjects’ vocal tics with such loving exactitude” that their affection for their peers peeks through. But Alessandrini seems to have spent his hiatus “removing any vestige of velvet gloves.”

The show doesn’t hit a bull’s-eye with every segment, said Linda Winer in Newsday. Among the revue’s 20 or so acts, there are a few “snoozers,” like an outdated parody of Mary Poppins. Still, “enough are treasures” that this show is “hard to resist.” You don’t have to be a musical-theater buff to find the numbers hilarious, but there are extra thrills for those who have seen the shows that are being satirized. They’re certain to give a warm welcome back to “the only cultural institution that has thrived for 30 years by devouring its own—with sharp teeth, a knowing palate, and, very deep down, a big heart.”