Picture: Julien Benhamou
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum continues at Lido2, Paris until 4 February 2024.Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★Not just a funny thing – this hysterical revival of the rarely-performed Stephen Sondheim farce, the first Broadway show for which he wrote both music and lyrics, is a total hoot. And if you were looking to give someone a special Christmas treat (or any sort of treat for that matter), make it an uproarious night out at the sparkling Lido2 on the Champs-Élysées in this entrancing City of Light.
After a ten-month pause for luxury renovation following its opening production Cabaret a year ago, this gem of a theatre specialising in English-language musicals on the site of the old Lido, a Paris landmark for tourists famed for its glitteringly-costumed extravaganzas, is back with a bang.
Helmed with great zest and flair by Cal McCrystal (he directed that panto hit Mother Goose with Ian McKellen and was physical comedy director for One Man, Two Guvnors at the National), it was hardly a funny start for A Funny Thing as Pseudolus the lead, American actor Richard Kind, had to pull out for personal reasons in mid-November just a couple of weeks before opening night.
British TV and theatre star Rufus Hound switched from the lesser role of Hysterium to replace Kind, with Andrew Pepper, well known for his witty cabarets at the Crazy Coqs, drafted in to pick up Hysterium. Both were excellent in what Hound says in his Prologue – Pseudolus is narrator as well as a Roman slave desperate to win his freedom – was a comedy converted in 1962 by Americans (book writers Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) from a 2,000-year-old play by a Roman, Plautus (254-184BC), before Sondheim got stuck into it. Four years after Broadway and three after the West End, it became a successful movie with Zero Mostel as the lead.
In Sondheim’s own glorious words when Pseudolus introduces the cast in the big opening number, it’s a show with “something familiar, something peculiar… something appealing, something appalling, something for everyone… a comedy tonight!” Bawdy, over the top, with silly walks, mistaken identities, crazy voices and masses of innuendo (often so obvious you could call it outuendo!), it is everything a good farce should be and more.
The plot is so complicated it’s hard to sum up. To earn his freedom, crafty Pseudolus does a deal with his young master Hero (Josh St Clair) who is mooning over a dim but gorgeous Cretan courtesan Philia (Neima Naouri), bought by Marcus Lycus (Martyn Ellis), a procurer of beautiful slaves, on behalf of Miles Gloriosus, a vain army captain away doing his duty for his country.
There’s a right old mix-up when the old Roman senator Senex, Hero’s father, bumblingly played by the delightful Patrick Ryecart, comes home early and Philia, thinking him the man she’s promised to, chats him up most suggestively. Poor Senex thinks it’s his lucky day but of course it isn’t and when Captain Miles returns from action, he noisily makes his presence felt. The plot twists and turns until all naturally ends well and we’re into a rousing reprise of ‘Comedy Tonight’ and a big hand from a French audience getting more and more conversant with the works of the great Sondheim.
Lido2 artistic director Jean-Luc Choplin, a longtime Sondheim admirer, has seen to that. In his days as supremo at the nearby Chatelet he brought A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park With George, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and Passion to Paris – all in English with French surtitles (translating the words of a god into a foreign language and making them shine must be a nightmare for a mere mortal) – so by my count A Funny Thing makes it six, all given the usual no-expense-spared French treatment as regards staging.
Tim Hatley’s set is a beauty with three circular dwellings side by side which are the homes of the unlovely slave trader Lycus, the dippy Senex and the dishevelled Erronius (David Rintoul) tearing about still trying find two children kidnapped as infants by pirates 20 years earlier).
Everybody’s timing is absolutely on point which is vital with farce but there are four particular highlights for me, headed by the mighty John Owen-Jones as the boastful Miles Gloriosus (if I tell you it translates as ‘braggart soldier’ you’ll get the picture). He absolutely takes over the stage with his ‘Bring Me My Bride’ (“I am my ideal/I, in the war most admired/in wit the most inspired/in love the most desired/in dress the best displayed”).
This is not a song-driven musical and there aren’t too many of them – ‘Comedy Tonight’ of course, the now politically incorrect ‘Everyone Ought to Have a Maid’ and the super-clever ‘Lovely’ are the other three to take away.
‘Lovely’ is Philia’s number and is all about herself. “I can’t add one and two” she tells us “but I’m lovely/All I am is lovely/Lovely is the one thing I can do/Oh, isn’t it a shame?/I can neither sew, nor cook, nor read or write my name/But I’m happy/Merely being lovely/For it’s the one thing I can give you.” Simply, er, lovely – and one-time RAM graduate Naouri does Sondheim proud.
There are outstanding contributions too from French classical musical comedy star Valerie Gabail as Domina, Senex’s dragon of a wife. Her soaring soprano almost lifts the roof off and the facial expressions accompanying her screeches are wonderfully grotesque. Finally a word for two ensemble members who stand out in more ways than one. Ethiopian contortionist Senayt, playing the exotic dancer Gymnasia (translates as “athlete, usually in a sexual way”) gets into extraordinary positions that would tax even the elastic-limbed Bonnie Langford, and Harriet Watson as the generously-endowed Vibrata (don’t ask) made one chap on a ringside table very happy by spreading herself decorously across him.
Top marks to McCrystal, to tried-and-trusted MD Gareth Valentine who copes brilliantly with having his 20-strong orchestra deployed half and half on each side of the stage, to choreographer Carrie-Anne Ingrouille for making the tricky ‘Everyone Ought to Have a Maid’ gel so well, to takis for the togas and the costumes, scanty though some are – one Protean came whizzing past our noses wearing only his underpants – and to Giuseppe di Iorio for his gorgeous lighting. Talking of which, the Christmas lights greeting you along the Champs-Élysées are quite a show on their own.
As my wife, much more a drama fan than farce, animatedly said on the way out: “That was six-star brilliant, and well worth the hassle of getting to Paris.” She hasn’t laughed in a while (well, being married to me is no joke) but for once she was radiant and happy. That’s the pick-me-up great theatre gives you – the best medicine in the world.
Get there before 4 February or you’ll miss it. Better still, bring it to the West End. We haven’t had this comic masterpiece in London for two decades, a limited run at the National in 2004. And you have to go back to 1963 and 1986 – TV funny man Frankie Howerd, titter ye not, was Pseudolus in both – to have seen it in the West End.
While ambitious Fringe spaces have recently tackled Sondheim’s less populist work like Anyone Can Whistle and the current Pacific Overtures – shows from which, in my view, only dyed in the wool Sondheim aficionados will take maximum pleasure – why not revive Forum which brings such joy to everyone?
Jeremy Chapman
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