There’s a rough, even sloppy exuberance to Forbidden Broadway, the cabaret currently playing at Tampa’s Straz Center, and if you can get over your desire for elegance and precision, you might find that the show is witty, inventive, and finally charming. The four actors who parody a dozen or so Broadway musicals — Heather Krueger, Kevin B. McGlynn, Lisa Watson (stepping in for Val Fagan on the night I attended), and Edward Staudenmayer — are talented and comically shameless, and Gerard Alessandrini’s lyrics ingeniously skewer everything from Les Miz to The Book of Mormon. This is one of those musicals in which the words are everything; listen closely and you’ll hear Cameron Mackintosh being pilloried for banking on souvenirs, Julie Taymor for insisting that her actors wear bone-crushing costumes, and the late Robert Goulet for having survived past the age when he could remember his lines. Of course, it helps if you’re familiar with the best-known New York hits (I’d seen all but three) but Forbidden Broadway is so generous, a few moments with its darts will tell you volumes about its targets. Which suggests another plus: This parody can warn you about plays you might otherwise waste your money on — for example, the dreadful one in which “to bring home a paycheck/I dress up in fur.” Have you guessed yet? Clue: Meow.

Anyway, this is how it works: On the nearly unadorned stage of the Straz’s Jaeb Theatre, our four workhorses come out in one after another emblematic costume (designed by Alvin Colt), and intone a song that points toward the absurdity, venality, or just plain presumption of musicals and their actors. So in the satire of Fiddler on the Roof, the singer asks why performers choose to live in New York City, and answers, to the tune of “Tradition,” “Ambition!” Which leads to other questions with answers like “Inflation!” “Rejection!” and “Complexion!” Or the satire of Mary Poppins leads to the observation that Broadways offers “So many Disney characters, you’ll get a sugar rush.” (The Rafiki figure from The Lion King even wears a Mickey Mouse doll on his head.) In the Man of La Mancha parody, the poor, burdened Don Quixote character sings of his ambition to “reach the unreachable note” (“This is my quest: to finish this song”). And in the Les Miz segment, all the actors mimic going round on a turntable, and one notes that, “While Jean Valjean is weeping/I can call the jerk with whom I’m sleeping.” Other harpoons are launched at Chicago (“Though the production may be shoddy/Everyone likes a naked body”), Annie (“Revive me! Revive me!…Before my red hair turns gray”), Jersey Boys (“Walk like a man/Sing like a girl”), Matilda, Once, and Phantom (whom Ethel Merman comes out to chide for murmuring into a microphone). There’s even a gravelly-voiced, hyper-overweight Harvey Fierstein character in the segment on Hairspray, singing “You can’t stop the camp!” And a Sarah Brightman appearance tests the durability of our eardrums.

Is it satisfying? Mostly, though the actors are so rushed from moment to moment (and have to hurry through so many costume changes) that the illusion often falters and we’re all too aware of the human effort being made to win our laughter. Not that such an approach doesn’t have its strengths; but they’d be more appealing in a smaller, more intimate space, where we could feel our camaraderie with the thespians who only inches away are working so hard. The Jaeb is just a bit too big for this effect; in a theater this size, crooked wigs and ill-fitting togs can look careless and untidy.

Still, the lyrics are usually delightful and the satire is wicked and Forbidden Broadway is largely enjoyable, occasional slapdash look or not. Alessandrini (who’s also credited with Phillip George as co-director) is one clever parodist, and he knows his subject to a tee. Whether you’re a Broadway fan or skeptic, you’ll find lots to like. As for me, I can only admire a show that so clearly loathes a certain feline blockbuster. Yeah, something’s very right in this cabaret.

Soaring Strings. I have just enough space left in which to mention how moving it was to hear one of my favorite pieces — Beethoven’s Rasumovsky Quartet #1 — played by the Ehnes Quartet at St. Petersburg’s Palladium earlier this month. Kudos to Palladium head Paul Wilborn for bringing a chamber series to the Bay area (next segment Mar. 1), especially since we don’t get many chances to hear this sublime music live. But now I wonder: Will anyone dare program Ludwig's Opus 130 with the Grosse Fuge? I’ll be first in line for a ticket.

Forbidden Broadway

Three of five stars

Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Pl., Tampa.

Through Mar. 12: Tues.-Sun., 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m.

$40-$45

813-229-STAR. strazcenter.org.

This article appears in Feb 16-23, 2017.