Calling all theater nerds! Writer/director Gerard Alessandrini’s satirical series FORBIDDEN BROADWAY, which made its debut in 1982, has returned with a new installment of his witty spoofs of popular songs, characters, shows, and stars from current, recent, upcoming, and classic hits and flops, a hilarious multi-talented cast of four – Chris Collins-Pisano, Danny Hayward, Nicole Vanessa Ortiz, and Jenny Lee Stern – delivering the lampooned show tunes, spot-on mimicry, and non-stop laughs, animated choreography by Gerry McIntyre, and accompaniment by the series’ original musical director Fred Barton on piano, in Merrily We Stole a Song, now playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at Theater 555. The cast: Nicole Vanessa Ortiz, Danny Hayward, Jenny Lee Stern, and Chris Collins-Pisano. Photo by Carol Rosegg. The parodic revue, comprised of 28 segments of sidesplitting sends-ups (with sound by Andy Evan Cohen), opens with a meta-theatrical curtain speech by an irritable usher (Stern), who forcefully insists that an audience member (Collins-Pisano, standing, walking around, and pushing his way into the middle of a row) take his seat, then launches into the song “Sit Down You’re Blocking the Aisle,” set to the tune of “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” from the 1950 musical Guys and Dolls. Right from the start, even before the cast takes the stage (furnished by set designer Glenn Bassett with a red carpet, two microphones, a grand piano, a marquee, and the backdrop of silver mylar curtain), avid theatergoers are already obsessed with recognizing the source and target of the take-off. While it undoubtedly helps to appreciate the humor if you’ve seen the shows or are familiar with the songs, stars, and plots, the riotous performances and blockbuster vocals are more than enough to enjoy, as are the wild array of quick-change costumes by Dustin Cross, hair and wigs by Ian Joseph, and props by Josh Iacovelli that laughingly simulate the originals. Danny Hayward and Chris Collins-Pisano. Photo by Carol Rosegg. Alessandrini’s pacing moves fluidly from one musical-comedy vignette to the next, with some overlap between them, including a two-part take-off on Back to the Future, featuring Hayward as Casey Likes’ Marty McFly and Collins-Pisano as Roger Bart’s Doc Brown, who travel through time from 1945 (to “visit Broadway, back when tickets cost a dime” and “find out where modern Broadway went wrong”) to the 23rd century (when “there’s no more actors to deal with and lots of robots to feel with and all the writers are AI”) and back again, to save the young Stephen Sondheim (who, in real life, was a fan of Forbidden Broadway and graciously permitted the parodies of his work) from pursuing a career in car design (since he loved their DeLorean) and return to the path of becoming an icon of musical theater. That leads into the related bits of the “Sondheim Revival Intro,” “Old Friends” from Merrily We Stole a Song’s titular inspiration Merrily We Roll Along (with Hayward, Stern, and Collins-Pisano respectively as Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, and Daniel Radcliffe, who switches effortlessly into “Harry Potter, Inc.”), just as the full cast’s “Company/Bump-A-Knee” (which calls out the show’s tight set) segues into Stern’s killer histrionic impersonation of its contentious Tony winner Patti LuPone. Nicole Vanessa Ortiz. Photo by Carol Rosegg. Other standouts are Ortiz’s powerhouse vocals and amazing range as “Audra in Gypsy,” reviewing the actresses who played Mama Rose on the stage and screen, and specifically competing with the legendary Ethel Merman; Hayward, Collins-Pisano, and Stern in “The Outsiders,” noting that their hot looks, muscles, and tee-shirts make them so “in” that they’re not outsiders, they’re insiders (to which they scream, “NO!!! Life is hard”); Ortiz and Stern in “Hell’s Kitchen and Alicia’s Piano Lesson,” singing “This Show’s a Big Liar” to the melody of Keyes’ “Girl on Fire,” setting the record straight on her true piano teacher, who isn’t named Miss Jane and didn’t really die (her actual teacher, Margaret Pine, was in the audience at the performance I attended); and Ortiz in “Wicked/Cynthia Erivo,” singing Alessandrini’s new lyrics to “Defying Gravity,” questioning Erivo’s age-defying casting as the teenage witch Elphaba opposite the much younger Ariana Grande in the soon-to-be-released movie (though “makeup can do wonders, ‘specially when it’s green”), enhanced with apropos green lighting by Joan Racho-Jansen. There were also witty digs at the snob appeal of “Lincoln Center” and the lack of originality of many jukebox musicals and adaptations of old books and films, with a lesson on “Broadway Rip-off Combinations” suggesting which two were mashed together to create a “new” show (e.g., Hamilton plus Annie equals Suffs), in the “Power of Math,” a take-off on “The Power of Love” from Back to the Future; and the cast voguing, camping it up, and snapping their fans in “Jellicle Cat Ball,” then asking the tongue-in-cheek question, “What the hell is a jellicle cat?” Jenny Lee Stern and Danny Hayward. Photo by Carol Rosegg. And Hayward and Stern’s segment on “Cabaret” and the reworked classic “Wilkommen,” tracing the history of the Emcees and Sally Bowles from its 1966 Broadway debut with Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli to its present revival with over-the-top crazed performances by Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin, is so funny and so on the money that it alone is worth the price of admission. Aside from keeping you laughing out loud, FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: Merrily We Stole a Song will inspire you to see the parodied shows you haven’t, so you can get in on the jokes and jabs and appreciate the humor of Alessandrini and his stellar cast even more. Running Time: Approximately 85 minutes, without intermission. FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: Merrily We Stole a Song plays through Friday, January 5, 2025, at Theater 555, 555 West 42nd Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $79, plus fees), go online.