Scene on Stage: ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’
No one was more skeptical than I when Two River Theater announced an all-male “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” a musical comedy shot through with gags, innuendo and bodily display, all to do with women. And now, having seen the production, no one is more won over.
It’s not a gimmick; it’s an interpretation. The 1962 musical is culled from the 21 surviving comedies of Titus Maccius Plautus, the Neil Simon of BCE Rome. The original story by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart incorporates Plautus characters: a conniving slave, a callow hero (named Hero), a lustful husband and his shrewish wife, an innocent maiden and a gaggle of seductive courtesans, all of whom would have been played by men back when. And so it is at Two River. Does it work? For sure. And then some.
