DAN'S PAPERS, June 27, 2008 Page 97 www.danshamptons.com
Entertainment review: forbidden broadway at gateway playhouse
Photos by Keith Llewellyn, Jeff Bellante
By Roy Bradbrook Forbidden Broadway at the Gateway Playhouse is a fun evening filled with a very talented quartet of actors performing iconoclastic parodies. This is an evening where you will almost always know the music, but the words are very different from the originals, so listen carefully. The show has become such an institution since its humble start back in 1982 at a supper club in NYC, that it may end up staging a parody of itself. The beauty of the show is that it’s kept fresh and up-to-date, even though some of the skits are carried over from one production to the next. Forbidden Broadway productions have literally traveled around the world during the last 27 years, with shows in the Middle East, Australia, Europe and even in the Seychelles! For this type of show to succeed, apart from great material, it demands great performers and Gateway certainly got this right. Erin Crosby, Kristen Mengelkoch, James Donegan and Kevin B. McGlynn are all consummate professionals with very good voices and very different personalities that combine to make that overworked word ‘synergy’ really apposite when applied to them. The
director for this production is Phillip George, who has worked for the past 21 years with Gerard Alessandrini, the creator of the show, and the music director is Robert Felstein. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an audience laugh as much and as often as they did on opening night. It’s amazing just how much these artists can do with minimal props, but the Fosse routine and the Les Miz skit were hilarious. You need to see it to really appreciate it. In fact, this ability to take a few key points from a performer or a show and accentuate them to the point where they become a
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caricature but are still believable is the basis of the show. If you like Sarah Brightman, I challenge you to not laugh your head off at Mengelkoch’s portrayal. If you don’t like her, you’ll laugh even more. It really is a wicked take of the diva! This is truly a fast moving ensemble that is able to switch moods, pace and costumes with what seems effortless ability, but in reality requires great skill and split second timing. The program has no apparent sequence, but charges happily from Mary Poppins to Spamalot and then Lion King by way of Man of La Mancha. All in all, I counted about 20 shows that are put under the satirical microscope and I may have missed one or two due to the show’s frenetic pace. There are also one or two moments when a serious message about the current parlous state of musical theater comes through. The show runs until July 6, and I recommend it as an antidote to the gloom and doom in the news. It’s not often that you can just sit back and laugh to your heart’s content. Sir Max Beerbohm was a noted satirist and caricaturist and in his words, “Remember, no one has ever been known to die of laughter.�
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