Most theater critics content themselves to express their opinions in prose in various media, but Gerard Alessandrini has, for a quarter century dating back to 1982, expressed his by taking songs from Broadway shows and elsewhere and writing new lyrics, then getting successive casts of four (plus a pianist) to perform them as an off-Broadway musical revue called Forbidden Broadway, making him, after a fashion, the
Weird Al Yankovic of the Great White Way. Various editions of Alessandrini's continually updated revue have been immortalized on CDs, and
Forbidden Broadway: Rude Awakening is the ninth, chronicling the version of the show that opened in the fall of 2007 (and including, in the "bonus tracks," tracks 16-21, numbers from earlier versions staged since the last CD,
Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit). In his liner notes, Alessandrini provides his view of recent musical events on Broadway, including several distinct trends: the continuing spate of Disney-related shows; dim-witted shows such as Hairspray and Legally Blonde; "jukebox" musicals full of old pop songs; overly serious shows such as Grey Gardens and The Light in the Piazza; revivals that attempt to re-create original productions exactly, such as A Chorus Line; and revivals that attempt to reinvent the shows, such as Company. He isn't really fond of any of these trends, but he finds in them great fodder for parody. And so come his musical commentaries, delivered by the expert cast of Jared Bradshaw, Janet Dickinson, James Donegan, and Valerie Fagan. In "Curtains for Curtains," Bradshaw impersonates David Hyde Pierce admitting to another Alessandrini criticism, the casting of television stars in musicals to attract tourists. (The same subject comes up later in a version of "[Give 'Em the Old] Razzle Dazzle" from Chicago, here called "Give 'Em the Old Star Replacement.") The Grey Gardens parody finds Janet Dickinson pretending to be
Christine Ebersole and commenting on the show's arty obtuseness. "Jersey Goys" takes on jukebox musicals, specifically criticizing the script of Jersey Boys for its tendency toward narrative asides to the audience. And "You Can't Stop the Camp" (set to the tune of "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray) is Alessandrini's comment on vapid musicals. But, as the show's title suggests, the big number is track 14, the nine-minute parody of the 2007 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Spring Awakening, which Alessandrini finds pretentious and thus ripe for satire. As usual with Forbidden Broadway productions and albums, the listener's enjoyment of this disc will be in direct proportion to his or her familiarity with the musicals that played on Broadway in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, and with the history of musical theater in general. Like its predecessors,
Forbidden Broadway: Rude Awakening is an album largely intended for musical theater buffs who will get all the jokes. They will find it hilarious. ~ William Ruhlmann