When A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum opened in 1962, it met with great success, including several Tony awards. The book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart is witty, fast-paced and clever, and the music and lyrics were written by the great Stephen Sondheim – need more be said? With this combination, all it takes for a fabulous evening of mayhem and farce is a couple of stellar slaves.
Thankfully, Theatre Palisades has just that with Travis Dixon expertly leading the show as Pseudolus, and Frank Weidner as his reluctant accomplice, Hysterium. Dixon easily juggles his duties as narrator and the mastermind behind the plot to win his master the spoken-for girl next door and, in turn, his freedom. His timing is spot on, his singing is beautiful and he has mastered the art of commanding the stage when he needs to, and fading into the background when it’s somebody else’s turn for the spotlight.
However, every Abbott needs a Costello, and Weidner fills those shoes admirably. As the high-strung slave-in-chief, Weidner gets dragged along in Pseudolus’ machinations, and beautifully bounces from hysterics to accomplice to dead bride-to-be back to hysterics. He definitely lives up to the name Hysterium.
Unfortunately, director Scott Martin failed to remember that the concept of the straight man needs to extend beyond the two leading slaves. The play has enough farce and gags inherently that it doesn’t need more. Yet Martin seems to try to fill every possible moment with more humor and more gags, which results, sadly, in gross overacting – Gail Wirth as Domina – and in the case of the house of Marcus Lycus, a complete failure to understand the function of the characters.
Lycus, played by Nathaniel Mathis, is supposed to be a cunningly shady businessman running one of the most profitable and sought-after houses of ill repute in the city. Instead, Mathis comes across as a flamboyantly gay, weak-kneed businessman, who has made it this far through sheer luck alone. And his flock of sought-after courtesans is comprised of dim-witted, uncoordinated, far-from-sexy women trying to get a laugh. The courtesans are not supposed to be funny; they’re supposed to be sexy and pose a plausible threat to the innocence and naiveté of the young Hero living next door. The only threat that these courtesans have is that Gymnasia might fall off her 5-inch heels.
Luckily, there is enough good to outweigh the bad in this production, and several performances that shouldn’t be missed include Luis Ordaz as Miles Gloriosus and Jim Witoszynski and Jose Acain as the Proteans. If you’ve never seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum, you should, and with Dixon at the helm, this one’s not bad.
