A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forume Forum

May 5, 1962

Theatre: 'A Funny Thing Happened . . .'

By HOWARD TAUBMAN

now what they found on the way to the forum? Burlesque, vaudeville and a cornucopia of mad, comic hokum.

The phrase for the title of the new musical comedy that arrived at the Alvin last night might be, caveat emptor. "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" indeed! No one gets to the forum; no one even starts for it. And nothing really happens that isn't older than the forum, more ancient than the agora in Athens. But somehow, you keep laughing as if the old sight and sound gags were as good as new.

Heed the Roman warning. Let the buyer beware if he knew burlesque and vaudeville and the old comic hokum and found nothing funny in it. For him the knockabout routines at the Alvin will be noisy and dreary.

A plastic-faced, rolling-eyed, Falstaff-like character like Zero Mostel playing zany follow-the-leader with three centurions ordered to keep an eye on him? A rubber-faced, murmurous David Burns playing an enamored old goat and cooing like an antiquated turtle dove? A bewigged and fluttering Jack Gilford got up in a shimmering white gown and pretending to be an agitated virgin? A lank, deep-voiced Shakespearean like John Carradine pretending to be a timid though agile dealer in courtesans?

If stuff like that -- wonder what word they had in the Colosseum for corn? -- doesn't joggle your funny bone, keep away from the Alvin. For the rest of us who were young and risible in the days when comedians were hearty and comedy was rough and tumble and for the new generations who knew not the untamed gusto of this ancient and honorable style of fooling, it will be thumbs up for this uninhibited romp.

Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, authors of the book, are willing to pay full credit, if not royalties, to Plautus, their distinguished antecedent. They admit they helped themselves to his plays. Who hasn't among comic writers in the last two millenniums? And whom did Plautus crib from?

Their book resorts to outrageous puns and to lines that ought to make you cringe. Like having a slave of slaves remark, "I live to grovel." Like having a domineering matron tell a slave holding a sculpture of her, "Carry my bust with pride." Like having a stately courtesan named Gymnasia bark at a eunuch, "Don't you lower your voice at me!"

George Abbott, who has been around a long time but surely staged nothing for the forum mob, has forgotten nothing and remembered everything. He has engineered a gay funeral sequence to a relentlessly snappy march by Stephen Sondheim. He has used mixed identities, swinging doors, kicks in the posterior, double takes and all the rest of the familiar paraphernalia with the merciless disingenuousness of a man who knows you will be defenseless.

Mr. Sondheim's songs are accessories to the pre-meditated offense. With the Messrs. Mostel, Gilford, Burns and Carradine as a coy foursome, "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" recalls the days when delirious farceurs like the Marx Brothers could devastate a number. When Mr. Mostel, the slave with a nimble mind and a desire to be free, persuades Mr. Gilford, the nervous straw boss of the slaves, to don virgin's white, the two convert the show's romantic and pretty "Lovely" into irresistible nonsense.

Ruth Kobart as a large-voiced, domineering wife, Brian Davies as the juvenile lead, Preshy Marker as a dumb but beautiful virgin, Ronald Holgate as a captain who admits to being a legend in his own time and Raymond Walburn as a confused old citizen of Rome are among the cheerful participants.

There are six courtesans who are not obliged to do much but have a great deal to show. There is choreography by Jack Cole -- it says here -- but not much. The set? Who needs more than a single simple one for a whole show? Plautus probably managed with less. Since Tony Walton didn't get to design much scenery, he has had his little joke with the odd assortment of leotards, tunics, togas, gowns and wreaths that pass for Roman duds.

Say all the unkind and truthful things you like about "A Funny Thing." It's noisy, coarse, blue and obvious like the putty nose on a burlesque comedian. Resist these slickly paced old comic routines, if you can. Try and keep a straight face as Zero Mostel explains to the sacrificial Jack Gilford that an impending pyre is only "a fire pyre."

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/19/specials/sondheim-forum.html

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