Forbidden Broadway: Behind the Mylar Curtain by Gerard Alessandrini, Michael Portantiere Page B

with members of the family for YouTube, and loved, loved,
loved every minute of it. Of course, that was the reason why
I stayed. My love for the show never wavered. In fact, my
feelings are as strong today as they were the first time I saw
the show in Boston in 1984.
    William Selby and Steve Essner in
"Grim hotel:'
    Did I use the word "family"? That's what we became.
When you're involved in the process of creating each new
show-with ideas flying about and Gerard's brilliant lyrics
being sung while you're trying to learn Phill George's terrific,
zany staging-there's a definite feeling that you're all in it
together. We bonded very quickly in the trenches.
    And oh, the joy of performing those numbers for an
audience! To take every chaotic moment of creativity in
rehearsal, pull it all together, don those amazing costumes,
and share it all with an appreciative crowd gave me a high
I never grew tired of.
    Being a part of Forbidden Broadway was like being on a merry-go-round, like
dressing up for Halloween every night. It gave me a chance to be a kid forever. I never
wanted it to end-and, in my heart, it never will.

     

The late '90s was a great era for Broadway theater. I think the freshness of Rent, and
the fact that it was a huge financial hit, sparked a sort of renaissance for Broadway. The
Chicago revival was another great success, and even some of the shows that weren't
hits, like The Life, were at least tuneful and original. Also, NewYork City itself was having
a renaissance. Under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the city was being cleaned up, and tourists
started to feel more comfortable being in midtown. This was
a major reason why we had moved to Ellen's Stardust, so we
could be right in the middle of the action.
    Ed Staudenmayer and Bryan Batt leap for joy
as they cry, "Shut Footloose!"
    And that's when Forbidden Broadway began to become
very tourist-friendly. For years, we had been sort of an "insider" show. Of course, we had always had some tourists in the
audience, but it was mostly people with some connection to
the theater. When we did Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back!,
we got such great reviews that tourists began to come to the
show in much greater numbers-and it stayed that way from
then on. Which is why, fortunately or unfortunately, we still
do the Annie number ("I'm thirty years old tomorrow") and
it still brings the house down.
    I think the fact that we ramped tip the show with Alvin
Colt's costumes also helped us appeal to tourists. His creations made such an effect that you didn't necessarily have
to get the show on all levels in order to enjoy it. I remember
watching the movie parodies on The Carol Burnett Show
when I was a kid. I certainly didn't catch all the referencesI didn't see most of those movies till many years later-but I was still doubled over
in laughter because Bob Mackie's costumes looked so funny. That's what Alvin did
for us.

    We played Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back! very successfully at Ellen's in '97, and
then we started planning a new edition. That's when Giuliani really started to clean up
the theater district at an amazing rate: The porno places were all closing, Disney was
gaining ground with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, the whole area was very
quickly becoming gentrified. It was almost too much,
too fast. The funny thing is, we were still getting shows
that were very adult-like the revival of Cabaret, which
was pretty filthy, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
The idea behind Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act
was, "We're gonna clean up, too!" Of course, the joke
was that we were edgier and meaner than ever.
    Bryan Batt, Kristine Zbornik, Lori Hammel, and
Ed Staudenmayer are Von Trapped in The Sound
of Music. It has always been a point of pride that
Forbidden Broadway never descended to camp, as
this picture proves.
    We still had to be careful about audience recognition of the shows we were spoofing. I remember that
when we