Forbidden Broadway: Behind the Mylar Curtain (3 page)

-Peter Brash

Peter Brash has been a writer of daytime dramas for twenty-eight years. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for his work on The Guiding Light and two Writers' Guild Awards
for Outstanding Script/Daytime Serial for Days of Our Lives (in 1999) and As the World
Turns (in 2009).

The year was 1984.The place: tech rehearsal for a Staten Island community theatre production of Evita. At one point, we were focusing
the lights that would come up on the woman playing Eva Peron for her
Big Moment. Suddenly, one of the stagehands walked to center stage,
extended his arms above his head, and began to sing full-out, "Don't cry
for me, Barbra Streisand!" The entire company dissolved in laughter.

I had certainly been aware of Forbidden Broadway beforehand, but this
spontaneous moment of mirth was my first indication that the show might
turn into a long-running phenomenon. If one of Gerard Alessandrini's hilarious
parody lyrics had already been burned into the brain of that young stagehand,
who was involved in our show mainly for social reasons and wasn't that much into
theatre, I could only imagine how popular FB was becoming among hard-core show
queens of all ages, genders, and sexual orientations.

My guess is that parody lyrics have existed since time immemorial. For all we
know, some ancient Athenian wag set his own irreverent words to choral odes from
the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides. There was probably a decrease in this sort of
snarky entertainment during the dour Dark Ages; but it's a safe bet that in the Renaissance, some fellows wrote their own bawdy lyrics to the tunes of various madrigals
and lute songs.

With the rise of film, television, and recording technology over the past hundred
years or so, the song parody became a popular art form. Remember the Marx Brothers'
takeoff on the Habanera from Carmen? In the '60s, Allan Sherman had a huge hit with
"Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," set to music from La Gioconda. (Technically speaking, that wasn't a parody lyric, since the original tune had no lyrics; but it's the same
basic principle.) More recently, "Weird Al" Yankovic made a career with his rejiggered
versions of such pop songs as "Beat It" ("Eat It") and "Another One Bites the Dust" ("Another One Rides the Bus"). And I don't know about you, but one of my favorite
Christmastime treats is radio airplay of Bob Rivers's spoof of "Winter Wonderland,"
titled "Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear."

Gerard traffics in this same zany mode of expression, and he does so with great skill
and talent. He can take a complex Sondheim lyric like "Putting It Together" and come
up with an equally complex but hilarious parody. On the other hand, Gerard knows
how to keep it simple when necessary, and he has often stated that some of his best
parody lyrics are those in which he makes only slight changes to the originals. For
example, he took the line "At the end of the day, you're another day older" from Les
Miserables and changed only two words to come up with "At the end of the play, you're
another year older." (A lesser, more literal lyricist might have used "show" instead of
"play," since musicals aren't often called plays. But Gerard realized his parody would
be ten times funnier if it not only scanned perfectly with the original but also rhymed
with it. Well, hey, God is in the details.)

Forbidden Broadway is Gerard's baby, so it seemed only natural that the story of
the show should he told in his own words, as it is in the following pages. But literally
hundreds of behind-the-scenes individuals have contributed to FB's success over the
past three decades. Then there are the scores upon scores of super-talented singing
actors who've cavorted in FB through the years. I use the word "cavorted" because
that's what it looks like to the audience, but as is pointed out several times in this
book, playing Forbidden Broadway is no day at the beach. Simply to list the names of
everyone who's appeared in the show would require more space than we have here,
but many of these people are acknowledged in the book's chapters, and several have
provided Forbidden reminiscences.

A note about the lyrics included in this book: We have chosen samples from each
edition of the show, but they represent only about 20 percent of Gerard's total output. As of this writing, Gerard is taking a hiatus from Forbidden Broadway in order to
work on other projects. But when and if he chooses to return to the field of musical
theatre parody, we're sure to get another tremendous rush of his own special brand
of comic genius.

- Michael Portantiere

Throughout the near thirty-year history of Forbidden Broadway, literally hundreds of
people have contributed to the show's success. I would like to take this opportunity to
thank them all, while giving a special nod to the following individuals for their efforts
above and beyond the call of duty: Pete Blue, the brilliant musician who helped me put
the show together way back in 1982; Sella Palsson, who gave Forbidden Broadway its
first home; Fred Barton, ace musical director/pianist; Phill George, who co-directed
several editions of the show, contributing many brilliant and hysterically funny ideas
for numbers as well as contributing dialogue for some of the more recent editions;
John Freedson, our tireless producer; Alvin Colt, our iconic costume designer; Carol
Sherry, who designed the wigs for the show from 1998 through 2008, and TeresaVuoso,
who designed the wigs for our earlier editions; Jerry James and Jim Griffith, our terrific stage managers; Hugh Fordin of DRG Records, who produced our cast albums;
Mark Sendroff, entertainment lawyer extraordinaire; Becky Flora, our first publicist,
who helped to establish Forbidden Broadway in New York; and press agent Glenna
Freedman, who for over twenty-two years has kept the show running and exhibited
finesse in her dealings with all of the personalities involved.

Like so many other young hopefuls, I came to New York to be an actor on Broadway,
but I could never get an audition. I remember that they wouldn't even see me for
Merrily We Roll Along, though I was exactly the right age. As it happened, Forbidden
Broadway premiered around the same time as Merrily, and I ultimately used a parody
of their artwork-the three silhouettes on the roof-for our show. But I'm getting
ahead of my story...

Since I wasn't being seen for anything, I channeled my energy into writing. The
first theatre parody lyric I wrote was a spoof of Richard Burton in Camelot. He was
doing the show at the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center in 1981, and I was
working as a waiter and a maitre d' at Avery Fisher Hall across the plaza. As soon as
the run started, I would hear people gossiping about Burton: "He went up on his lines
tonight." "He looked unsteady onstage."

My friend Peter Brash was also a waiter at Avery Fisher. He told me that he was
chosen to be Burton's personal waiter at the opening night party for Camelot. The
producers gave Peter specific instructions not to serve him alcohol, but Burton took
him aside that night and said, in that voice of his: "My wife really loves white wine, so
I want you to keep her glass full at all times."

About two nights later, they brought the curtain down on Burton in the middle of
his first number, "I Wonder What the King Is I)oing Tonight?," reportedly because he
had some kind of had reaction to medication. The next morning, the New York Post
headline-in red!-was "It's Curtains for Burton." I thought, "How embarrassing and
funny at the same time." So I took that song and wrote a parody lyric: