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At Broadway Bares, last month’s parade of the most ripped bods on the Great White Way, the audience was asked to hold its applause until every sponsor’s name was read aloud. Silent they stayed, until emcee Judith Light came to “Mark Fisher Fitness” — and the crowd went wild.
Turns out many of them got their own svelte bodies from Fisher or his finely chiseled MFF team. They’re kicking Broadway butt, and Broadway’s loving it.
It’s like the second coming of fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne, only cooler — and with sequins.
MFF’s motto — “Ridiculous Humans, Serious Fitness” — sums up its MO, a mix of the tried-and-true with the borderline batty. On the one hand, it promotes conscientious calorie counting and lots of water, protein and push-ups. On the other — unicorns, improv dance parties and Equity-card-carrying trainers decked out in glittery vests, hot pants or less.
Then there’s Fisher himself, a 33-year-old straight guy — ask his girlfriend, dancer Shina Morris — whose sexually charged workout riffs might make Jane Fonda split her spandex.
“I don’t think the potty mouth is for everybody, but it makes me laugh,” says director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell.
Three years ago, Mitchell auditioned several actors he knew for “Kinky Boots” when he noticed their bodies had drastically changed, for the better: “When I asked how, I kept hearing, ‘Mark Fisher! Mark Fisher Fitness!’ ”
So Mitchell signed up for MFF’s “Snatched in Six Weeks” program. (“Snatched” is dancer slang for “buff.”) “It basically transformed me,” the 53-year-old says. “I looked at my before and after pictures, and it looked like I had a $30,000 liposuction job!”
These days, Mark Fisher Fitness, formerly confined to a rented Midtown studio, comprises two Hell’s Kitchen storefronts and a basement. Just don’t call it a gym: In MFF parlance, it’s a “clubhouse,” short for “The Enchanted Ninja Clubhouse of Glory and Dreams.”
“I got really lucky,” says Fisher, a New Jersey native (the Barnegat exit off the Garden State Parkway). A shy, skinny guy, he didn’t hit a gym until he was 18. But once he started, he couldn’t stop. Six years ago, between regional-theater gigs and the odd Allstate Insurance ad, he began training actors, including future “Book of Mormon” star Andrew Rannells. And he realized he loved it!
Since then, he’s trained Tony winners Billy Porter, who dropped 25 pounds for “Kinky Boots,” and Patina Miller, whose biceps beg for Playbill bios of their own.
“At first I didn’t believe the hype,” says the “Pippin” star, recalling her initial session with trainer Kyle Langworthy, who showed up in a tutu.
But, determined to be “lean and ripped,” she overcame her hesitation. Many lateral lifts, push-ups and protein shakes later, she met her goal — and then some.
Brynn O’Malley, who plays Grace, Daddy Warbucks’ right-hand gal in “Annie,” signed up for “Snatched” when she was cast in “Honeymoon in Las Vegas” and realized she’d be playing it in a bikini.
By week four, she was ready to bare all. “I’m going to get a tattoo,” she jokes. “ ‘Body by Fisher!’ ”
Monthly fees range from $100 to $800, the last for the all-inclusive “Nailing the S - - t Out of It and F - - king Its Dead Corpse.” And then there’s “Snatched”: six weeks for $799, and the member with the most striking before-and-after photos gets his or her money back. One who did is Chris Sieber, the once-stocky star of “Spamalot” and “Shrek.”
“I lost 28 pounds in six weeks and it keeps falling off . . . Isn’t that crazy?” He gave his refund to his husband, Kevin Burrows, who won his money back, too.
“You can’t really fail, as long as you show up and go,” claims Sieber, who takes up to four classes a week and still counts calories.
“Literally, you wake up one morning and say, ‘OMG, I have a jawline! Where did that come from?’ ”