Knee-Jerk Revivals and Other Punch Lines
‘Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!,’ a Satiric Revue
Ben Brantley
May 6, 2014: At the end of a long, bleary season on Broadway, a burnt-out case ducks into a hole in the wall off Times Square, looking for a little sympathetic companionship. Soon enough, he finds it in a woman perched on top of a piano, wearing a little beret and an air of infinite jadedness. To the tune of “C’est Magnifique,” she sings a few words, and our guy knows that she understands just how he feels: “Go smoke some crack, ’cause guess what just came back, ooh la la la, ‘Les Misérables.’ ” She’s rueful, amused, resigned and fatalistic in that special way that people are when they’ve been unlucky in love, but keep returning for more. That nameless dame is incarnated by Carter Calvert in Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!, the seminew revue at the Davenport Theater, and she has a few, highly entertaining friends who share her Rialto-weariness.
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