Gerard Alessandrini
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gerard Alessandrini (born November 27, 1953) is an American playwright, parodist, actor, and theatre director best known for creating the award-winning off-Broadway musical theatre parody revue Forbidden Broadway. He is the recipient of an Obie Award, four Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and two Lucille Lortel Awards, as well as the Drama League Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
[edit] Life and career
Alessandrini was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in suburban Needham. After graduating from the Boston Conservatory of Music, he moved to New York City. As a young actor in summer stock, regional theater, and dinner theater, he starred in The Fantasticks, Oklahoma and Carousel, among others. He also worked at the off-Broadway Light Opera of Manhattan.
In late 1981, Alessandrini, in collaboration with Phillip George, created a musical parody revue featuring spoofs of songs from Broadway musicals on which he had been working for some time. After a few months of weekend performances starring Alessandrini and a few friends at Palsson's Supper Club, the show evolved into Forbidden Broadway, which opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's, directed by Alessandrini. He continued to appear in the revue, which caught the theatergoing public's attention after Rex Reed published a rave review[1] and ultimately ran for 2,332 performances in a number of venues.[2] It subsequently has been rewritten several times to include parodies of newer shows and has run almost continuously for 25 years with productions both in and outside New York. The current incarnation, called Forbidden Broadway: Rude Awakening, is playing at the 47th Street Theatre.[3]
Alessandrini can be heard on five of the seven Forbidden Broadway cast albums, as well as the soundtracks of Disney's animated films Aladdin and Pocahontas. His directorial credits include Equity Library Theatre's revival of Gigi and Maury Yeston's 1998 show In the Beginning. In 1991, he co-wrote, directed and performed in the television parody Masterpiece Tonight, a satirical salute to the 20th anniversary of Masterpiece Theatre. In 1995, some of his sketches were featured in Carol Burnett’s CBS special, Men, Movies and Carol. He has also written comedy specials for Bob Hope and Angela Lansbury for NBC.
During the summer of 2001, Alessandrini introduced his Gongcores series with a tongue-in-cheek production of the 1962 Irving Berlin flop Mr. President. He plans to present other updated spoofs of obscure musicals that failed.
