![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayA while back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kestrell and I went to see a local production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This writeup is not timely enough to be a useful review, but there's some stuff worth remembering.
The movie version of this has long been a favorite of mine, but I had never seen it performed live. I listened to the theatrical soundtrack incessantly as a youth, so I knew (most of) the different songs, but I was pretty sure the stage version didn't end with a wacky chariot race, and was curious how the stage version wrapped up.
It was put on in a small theater, with a simple but effective set. The play mostly takes place on a street in front of three houses, and the set design made it very clear which house was which: The run-down abandoned door surmounted by a gaggle of geese, the big impressive portico with a huge dollar sign over it, and the red-lit beaded curtain with a playboy bunny atop it and Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx logos prominently displayed.
The theater director gave his little mini-speech before the show. It closed with an element which, though I weep at its necessity, seemed like a good idea in this unenlightened age: "Laugh. Laugh a lot, laugh out loud."
This production had an interesting aspect that, I suspect, was not present in the original. Lacking the budget for "hundreds of actors out of sorts", they had three mult-purpose actors whom they introduced as "Proteans", who took the roles of miscellaneous citizens, slaves, soldiers, merchants, and eunuchs, often with minimal costuming and funny voices. I expect that they had as much fun (and worked as hard as) the leads. Kes and I both think that "Protean", in this sense, is a useful word/concept and should be spread widely.
Courtesans are an important feature of this show, and they had some good ones. Tintinabula was wearing a belly-dancing outfit with poofy pants that seemed demure. Until she moved, revealing that they were slit, as I spontaneously narrated to Kes, "all the way to Heaven". The twins were an interesting change-up: in this production they were fraternal, adding all sorts of intriguing erotic possibilities, and a quite new set of interpretation to the innuendo.
There was one notable accident, leading to some fun ad-libbing. They had a bit of business during the "I'm Lovely" number with bringing on an electric fan and blowing rose petals at the singer. This shtick was reused during the reprise in Act Two with Pseudolus and Hysterium (in drag). Hysterium accidentally inhaled a rose petal near the end of the number, and was choking a bit. Luckily, he didn't have any lines for a while after that, as he was meant to be pretending to be a dead courtesan. When Miles Gloriosus asked how his intended bride had perished, Pseudolus jumped in with "Choked on a rose petal and just keeled right over." It's a good thing MG was too distracted by his grief to notice the 'corpse' quivering with repressed giggles and renewed choking!
The end of the stage show turns out to be a fairly traditional french farce, with people running in and out of doors, until the final denouement. "And a happy ending, of course!"
"What is the moral? / Must be a moral. / Here is the moral, wrong or right: / Morals tomorrow, comedy tonight!" Man, I love this show :)
kestrell and I went to see a local production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This writeup is not timely enough to be a useful review, but there's some stuff worth remembering.The movie version of this has long been a favorite of mine, but I had never seen it performed live. I listened to the theatrical soundtrack incessantly as a youth, so I knew (most of) the different songs, but I was pretty sure the stage version didn't end with a wacky chariot race, and was curious how the stage version wrapped up.
It was put on in a small theater, with a simple but effective set. The play mostly takes place on a street in front of three houses, and the set design made it very clear which house was which: The run-down abandoned door surmounted by a gaggle of geese, the big impressive portico with a huge dollar sign over it, and the red-lit beaded curtain with a playboy bunny atop it and Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx logos prominently displayed.
The theater director gave his little mini-speech before the show. It closed with an element which, though I weep at its necessity, seemed like a good idea in this unenlightened age: "Laugh. Laugh a lot, laugh out loud."
This production had an interesting aspect that, I suspect, was not present in the original. Lacking the budget for "hundreds of actors out of sorts", they had three mult-purpose actors whom they introduced as "Proteans", who took the roles of miscellaneous citizens, slaves, soldiers, merchants, and eunuchs, often with minimal costuming and funny voices. I expect that they had as much fun (and worked as hard as) the leads. Kes and I both think that "Protean", in this sense, is a useful word/concept and should be spread widely.
Courtesans are an important feature of this show, and they had some good ones. Tintinabula was wearing a belly-dancing outfit with poofy pants that seemed demure. Until she moved, revealing that they were slit, as I spontaneously narrated to Kes, "all the way to Heaven". The twins were an interesting change-up: in this production they were fraternal, adding all sorts of intriguing erotic possibilities, and a quite new set of interpretation to the innuendo.
There was one notable accident, leading to some fun ad-libbing. They had a bit of business during the "I'm Lovely" number with bringing on an electric fan and blowing rose petals at the singer. This shtick was reused during the reprise in Act Two with Pseudolus and Hysterium (in drag). Hysterium accidentally inhaled a rose petal near the end of the number, and was choking a bit. Luckily, he didn't have any lines for a while after that, as he was meant to be pretending to be a dead courtesan. When Miles Gloriosus asked how his intended bride had perished, Pseudolus jumped in with "Choked on a rose petal and just keeled right over." It's a good thing MG was too distracted by his grief to notice the 'corpse' quivering with repressed giggles and renewed choking!
The end of the stage show turns out to be a fairly traditional french farce, with people running in and out of doors, until the final denouement. "And a happy ending, of course!"
"What is the moral? / Must be a moral. / Here is the moral, wrong or right: / Morals tomorrow, comedy tonight!" Man, I love this show :)