Search - Gerard Alessandrini :: Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act!: The Unoriginal Cast Recording, Volume 5 (1998 New York Cast)

Great Recording

09/19/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is incredible. By far, it is one of my favorites. One thing I recomend before buying it is make sure you know at least half of the stuff they make fun of or the cd will be no fun. Especially the one for Mandy Patinkin and Titanic. Some of my favorite shows they make fun of are Cabaret, The lion king, Titanic (they also include stuff from the movie in this song), Mandy Patinkin (hilarious if you have heard him before) and Les Miserables. My favortie singer on the soundtrack is Lori Hammel. The only thing that wasn't very good was her impression of Bernadette Peters. No one can immitate her. Other than that this CD is wonderfull."

Forbidden Broadway at its best

08/18/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome. Fremde, etranger. I will attack you and make you feel sick, wicked and raunchy when I grab my-""Stop right there! That lyric is polluted and that gesture is obscene. I order you to stop immediately!""Just a minute, please! Who are you!?""I am mayor Rudolph Giuliani! And you're in violation of New York City's new zoning laws for adult entertainment. No parody lyrics within fifty feet of any church or school....From now on I don't want to see anything on this stage dirtier than....than.... Mary Poppins!"When the time for FB5 came around, Gerard Alessandrini had established himself as a terrific parody writer, and the show itself had become near and dear to theatre-lovers' hearts. Alessandrini's level of comfort with pushing Broadway's buttons shows, and contributes to perhaps the funniest volume in the seven-volume collection. The show couldn't have come at a better time. As Alessandrini writes in the booklet, while Mayor Giuliani was cleaning up Broadway's seedier aspects outside, inside Broadway was becoming more and more raunchier with shows like Cabaret and Chicago. Not only that, but it also came in the wake of the 1998 Tonys with the fierce competition between Lion King and Ragtime. All four aformentioned shows, by the way, have hillarious parodies, knocking everything from Natasha Richardson, Ann Reinking, Julie Taymor, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Special attention is payed to the sure-fire flops; has anyone heard of Swan Lake besides Bryan Batt and Edward Staudenmayer ripping apart the allegro moderato and waltz? Cult-classics like Jekyll and Hyde fall prey, as does The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which makes for an amazing parody of a play.Ah yes, the actors. I don't think I've laughed harder than I did during Super-Frantic-Hyper-Active-Self-Indulgent-Mandy, and Ann Miller's "I'm Still Weird" couldn't have been more perfectly performed. Let's not forget the long-runners, either. Andrew Lloyd Superstar gets his due, and Les Miserables gets it once again (would it be a Forbidden Broadway without giving the now-longest-running show on Broadway a swift kick in the derriere?).Another highlight has got to be the Sound of Music in Cabaret segment, and looking at the picture from it in the booklet makes me laugh even harder.A great introduction to Forbidden Broadway, and a must for any theatre afficionado, Cleans Up its Act is guaranteed to please, even if it's not as clean as Mary Poppins."

Absolutely Brilliant

Ian Gordon (ijgordon@iname.com) | New York City | 06/30/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording (and the show, for that matter) is absolutely brilliant. Alessandrini is a genius (well-deserved Drama Desk Award) and the performers are exceptional. One of the better FB recordings."