Scream Girls and Gypsies

By Gerald Clarke

Forbidden Broadway fills the house by poking fun at the hits

If Jennifer Holliday has left the New York cast of Dreamgirls, then who is that large woman belting out one of her songs at Palsson's Supper Club on West 72nd Street? But wait a minute. The tune is the same, but the lyrics are just a little off.

And I am tellin' you I'm not

singing

Anybody can sing and chant

I much rather scream and rant

Yes I'm a scream girl . . .

Compared to my raspy trills

Louis Armstrong is Bev'ly Sills.

If the wicked words do not explain what is going on, the laughter from the audience does. As it celebrated its first anniversary last week, Forbidden Broadway was standing-room only, one of the hottest tickets in town. Many people come for updates; 60% of the material is different from when the show opened. This parody of the real Broadway is imitating the hits in more ways than one: a Los Angeles company will open at the Comedy Store in April; there may be other productions in Boston and San Francisco and a cable show too. In a time when big-budget musicals open and close almost instantaneously, Forbidden Broadway, which was started with only $2,000, looks like a long-run hit.*

The reason is obvious: the show is high-proof, often lethal fun. Before the evening is through, the talented five-member cast has toppled icons up and down the Great White Way, everybody from those women of the year, Lauren Bacall and Raquel Welch, to those women of every year, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin. In a crater-deep voice, Nora Mae Lyng, 30, imitates Bacall in Woman of the Year:

I'm one of the girls

Who sings like a boy.

My voice is as low

As the tunes I destroy.

I'm one of the ladies

Who sings like a bass.

The only things worse

Are the lines on my face . . .

But Welch should not feel too smug, because minutes later Chloe Webb, 24, takes her on as well.

"My film career stopped, "she sings to the tune of New York, New York.

My Vegas act flopped

I had no other choice at all

Broadway, New York.

The instigator of all this deviltry is Gerard Alessandrini, 29, a deceptively mild, cherubic-looking singer-composer who admits to having a lifelong crush on the musical theater. Though it may not seem so at first hearing, Forbidden Broadway is actually a love letter to the real thing. "Some people have said to me that there's a lot of anger in the material," says Alessandrini. "If so, I didn't realize it. What I hope comes through is our appreciation of Broadway. I'd gladly switch places with any of those people we spoof."

In fact, he has tried. The only one of the cast who has ever made it to Broadway is Bill Carmichael, 28, who played in Peter Pan. The others, including Piano Player Fred Barton, 24, are Broadway gypsies, young aspirants hoping for a break.

Alessandrini started his imitations as a high school student in Boston when he won the lead in Oklahoma! by impersonating Gordon MacRae. He later moved to Manhattan, where he landed a job at Lincoln Center--as a waiter in Avery Fisher Hall's Allegro Cafe. He wrote parodies in his spare time and worked up a routine with his friend Lyng. After polishing their material, they opened their show at Palsson's last January. It was an almost immediate sellout, and inevitably many of the stars came to hear how they fared. Most loved the show, although Merman felt obliged to note that she had never elbowed Martin to the other side of the stage, as Lyng does to Webb.

Some stars wanted in. Carol Channing, for instance, seemed disappointed that she was not included, and before she could say, "Well, hello, Dolly," she was. "Oh no, Carol, oh no, no, no, Carol," sing Alessandrini and Carmichael. "Don't you do Hello, Dolly once again." Other stars even gave advice. Ann Miller went backstage in her white mink to say that the wig Webb wears did not quite match her own. She offered to send her hairdresser to make sure it was right.

Forbidden Broadway has had a few bombs. "I once played Sandy, the dog in Annie, and was really terrible," admits Alessandrini. But bad numbers are quickly thrown out, and Alessandrini adds new songs to reflect what is happening downtown. Besides the skit from Dreamgirls, there is a takeoff on Nine, and Cats will soon enter the list. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber will undoubtedly be howling with delight, like everyone else. Has anyone been wounded enough to sue for libel? "Not yet," says Alessandrini, who feels required, like any prudent man, to add: "Knock wood."

--By Gerald Clarke.

Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York

* Another bright, irreverent Manhattan cabaret act, with some show-business takeoff, is Upstairs at O'Neal's, which opened on West 43rd Street, in Times Square, last October.

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/New York This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.