Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!: Theater review by Adam Feldman

Every Broadway season gets the Forbidden Broadway it deserves. Nearly each year since 1982, Gerard Alessandrini has fashioned a new edition of his affectionately acid-tongued parodic revue, sending up the Great White Way in comic numbers based on songs from the very shows he’s skewering. The series’s modus operandi is not unlike that of kung fu, in which one is said to use an opponent’s own strength against him. As such, it leaves Alessandrini in the precarious position—a fiddler on the spoof!—of depending on Broadway for material. When shows or stars have strong styles, good or bad, they lend themselves to parody; but they are harder to run down when, like most of this season’s offerings, they are planted in the middle of the road.