More Plays and Shows
Back ◄   ► Next
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Venue: Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park 1999
Directed by Ian Talbot




Cast
Prologus  an actor Roy Hudd
Senex   a citizen of Rome Michael Tudor Barnes
Domina   wife of Senex Susie Blake
Hero   son of Senex and Domina Rhashan Stone
Hysterium   slave to Senex and Domina Gavin Muir
Pseudolus   slave to Hero Roy Hudd
Erronius   a citizen of Rome Ken Wynne
Miles Gloriosus   a warrior Peter Gallagher
Lycus   a buyer and seller of courtesans Peter Forbes
Philia   a virgin Claire Carrie
Tintinabula   a courtesan Rebecca Hartley
The Geminae   courtesans Sara Hillier
Rachel Matthews
Vibrata   a courtesan Natasha Bain
Gymnasia   a courtesan Fiona Dunn
The Proteans Ben Hicks
Vincent Penfold
Giles Taylor
Tony Whittle


SLAVES TO COMEDY
Roy Hudd stars as Pseudolus with Gavin Muir as Hysterium
 in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Review

Sondheim connoisseurs will love this opportunity to take another look at one of the writer’s ear1y works. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) is particularly interesting in that it was the composer's first produced show for which he wrote all the words and music. And yet enjoying such a jolly theatrical romp in these delightful surroundings is likely to be just as satisfying. Set 200 years before the Christian era, on a spring day in Rome, this vaudevillian adventure is unlikely to amuse anyone who runs away at the mention of the word 'farce', but there is still plenty in Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove's silly and very clever book to have a contemporary audience in stitches.

In conjunction with some appropriately camp choreography from Lisa Kent, director Ian Talbot manages to keep up the comic pace, adding some original touches and allowing the hilarious antics of he Proteans – Ben Hicks, Vincent Penfold, Giles Taylor and Tony Whittle to be a highlight of the whole evening. He is also helped by Paul Farnsworth's colourful set, as well as eight fine musicians led by musical director Catherine Jayes. Occasionally Roy Hudd seems to have taken on too much in the  demanding lead role of Pseudolus, but his playful way with the rest of the cast, as well as the audience, are hints that he is likely to improve with every performance. Michael Tudor Barnes. Peter Gallagher and Pete Forbes keep the laughs flowing, while Claire Carne and a likeable Rhashan Stone do well in portraying the soppy lovers who cause all the chaos in the first place.

*   *   *   *   *

Reviewed in Variety

Paul Farnsworth’s tilted, comic book-colored sets are the first thing you see at the Open Air Theater in Regent’s Park’s new production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and they couldn’t get an otherwise uneven revival off to a giddier start. There, on full view, are the three Roman houses that set in motion the dizzy plot, their facades a riot of skewed, screaming pigment that immediately tip you off that all is not to be taken seriously in Stephen Sondheim, Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove’s Plautine adaptation. That much is worth remembering during the straiter-laced stretches of a staging that won’t exactly be remembered for its vocal finesse. But even when the company’s invention begins to flag, the designs prompt a chuckle, leaving the audience feeling almost as bright as the cavalcade of color they have been drinking in all night.

Thirty-seven years after its premiere, Forum retains its knockabout charm, even if it has the misfortune to deliver its best number — the now-classic Comedy Tonight — right at the start, rendering the rest of the first score for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics somewhat anti-climactic. And hypothetically, at least, this musical has an ideal home in Britain, since its determinedly broad tits-and-bum shenanigans are entirely of a piece with England’s own anything-for-a-leer comedy Carry On, which explains the association with Forum over the years of Carry On mainstay Frankie Howerd. (He was the West End’s last Pseudolus at the Piccadilly more than a decade ago.)

Our guide through the evening this time around is Roy Hudd, the popular comedian and variety artist who possesses just the right genial insouciance to take us through a very tall tale of deliverance from servitude. What Hudd doesn’t have is much of a voice, but he’s pretty much at one with a cast that substitutes in good nature and amiability for what it lacks in vocal chops, moving in and out of the amplification much as Catherine Jayes’ orchestra moves in and out of tune.

The exceptions start with the gloriously bombastic Miles Gloriosus of Peter Gallagher (not the Broadway Peter Gallagher), a moussed-haired vision in blue suede shoes who has only to swivel his pelvis to send the courtesans into a swoon. As the wide-eyed young lover Hero, Pseudolus’ master, Rhashan Stone is better when singing than not; elsewhere, he indulges the same over-the-top mooniness that characterized his Roland Maule earlier this year in the Ian McKellen Present Laughter in Leeds.

As for comic invention, director Ian Talbot’s brightest ideas pertain to the quartet of so-called Proteans, who come on sporting Cupid’s arrows during Love, I Hear and otherwise as often as not recall the beloved Coneheads from the heyday of Saturday Night Live.

There have been far funnier versions of I’m Calm than that offered up by Gavin Muir’s Hysterium, just as many a Philia — the (va-voom) virgin — has been less shrill (and more youthful) than Claire Carrie’s is here. But why split hairs about a not-great musical that wants nothing more or less than to elicit some groaning belly laughs? On a balmy night in Regent’s Park, few London settings are so delightful. And if it starts to rain, worry not — Farnsworth’s inspired stage set will make a smile your umbrella.