New York’s longest-running musical-comedy revue, Forbidden Broadway, has lampooned hits on the Great White Way and allowed musical-theatre buffs to celebrate and deride their devotion for almost three decades. The show, conceived by Gerard Alessandrini and given a slapdash revamp for London crowds, is pure bubble gum, which would be fine if it weren’t regrettably short on snap and flavour. Some of the send-ups, delivered by a hard-working cast of four, plus one pianist, bob along brightly. The sugary Chitty Chitty Bang Bang gets a decent ribbing (“Truly nauseous / producers are so cautious”).

A spoof of the wannabe-risqué puppetry show Avenue Q goes: “If you want a Tony / flash a cloth cojone.” A parody of The Lion King, featuring makeshift costumes, is also amusing (the lion’s paws are tipped with clicking chopsticks), but you soon hanker after lyrics that have more satiric snarl and bite. The production’s targets — high ticket prices and naff merchandising — are often blindingly obvious. Comedy knock-offs of Billy Elliot, Hairspray and Mary Poppins, musicals that give audiences a better time than Alessandrini could dream of, seem hastily cobbled together. Far from sinking its claws into Broadway franchises, this show merely rolls them over, tickles their tummies and purrs with lazy self-satisfaction.

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