SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Against a body of extraordinary work that includes the musicals “A Little Night Music” (the opportunity for what held great promise as an exquisite revival of this rapturous chamber work featuring Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave, her real-life mother, as stage actress Desiree Armfeldt and her mother, Madame Armfeldt, was lost forever when Richardson died tragically on March 18 following a ski slope accident), “Company,” “Follies,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Passion,” with its felicitous nudity, and “Pacific Overtures,” Stephen Sondheim’s 1962 “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” surely is his strangest creation.
By 1962 Sondheim was already indelibly linked as lyricist to two musicals now ranked among Broadway’s greatest, 1957’s “West Side Story” and 1959’s “Gypsy,” but “A Funny Thing” was the first Broadway musical for which he wrote the lyrics and the score.
There seemed little more to say about the effort than that--even with the production’s Best Musical Tony win in 1963..jpg)
The difference between this early Sondheim commercial success (a rarity for original productions of his musicals) and his later work can be found in the comparison of two songs—“Pretty Little Picture” from “A Funny Thing” and “By the Sea” from 1979’s “Sweeney Todd.” Removed from their setting, both songs are remarkably alike in their lightness, but “By the Sea,” in the context of the “Sweeney Todd” plot, is utterly devastating—and even more so in Tim Burton’s 2007 film adaptation of the musical, in which the number became an apotheosis of the macabre, emphasizing the sad but mesmerizing delusions of meat pie maker Mrs. Lovett, who even after her complicity with Todd in wholesale, systemized slaughter still believes an idyllic life can be had with her “Mr. T.”
But “Pretty Little Picture” remains almost forgettable—if any Sondheim song can truly be called that—either within its “A Funny Thing” setting or removed from it.
The least profound of Sondheim’s musicals, “A Funny Thing” delivers nothing more or less than is promised in its Broadway anthem opening number, “Comedy Tonight!”
And that’s just how director Dustin M. Czarny played it for Appleseed Productions' season-ending staging.
“Weighty affairs will just have to wait,” sings Pseudolus, the slave who is quick to exploit any opportunity to gain his freedom, played by Greg J. Hipius in a start-to-finish comic whirlwind performance. (“Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!” he chants at one point, disguised as a soothsayer.)
Hipius, Michael Spinoso Jr. as Hysterium, Lanny Freshman as Senex, Patricia Elise Catchouny as Domina, Mark Allen Holt as Lycus, Bill Ali as Miles Gloriosus and Harlow Kisselstein as Erronius kept the comedy coming from all sides.
Many of the vaudevillian gags that fill Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart’s book were delivered dead-on, especially by Hipius and Freshman:
Pseudolus: Sir! You’re back!
Senex: She almost broke it.
But the cast, from time to time, completely missed some of the jokes. In the second act, for example, at the height of the farce, Philia (Danan Healy), the blonde virgin whom Senex’s son Hero loves, and whom Senex has mistaken for his new maid and is trying to bed, Hysterium, impersonating Philia to deceive Miles Gloriosus, and Domina, who shows up also in a blonde wig in an attempt to catch her husband Senex straying, are the source of much confusion, which culminates in Senex mistaking his detested, disguised wife for Philia, and (to his horror) ends up having sex with her instead of Philia.
Yet director and cast failed to comprehend this. Or if there was a better way to play it, they didn’t show it.
Bill Ali packed Miles Gloriosus, the braggart warrior, with egoism.
As Hero, Dan Williams delivered an affectingly sincere “Love, I Hear.” The character’s resemblance to his mother Domina was hilariously chilling.
Among the courtesans, Jane Garlow delivered the steamiest performance as Tintinabula, whom Pseudolus “rejects" as “too noisy.” It should have been just the start of escalating sexual gymnastics from the professional pleasure-givers, but it wasn’t. An opportunity to turn a colonnaded portico into an Ancient Rome strip club, with the dancers using the columns as poles, was also lost.
Bobby Hall, Jesse Navagh and Anthony Wright’s Proteans, each portraying an array of characters, were a continuous source of laughs, delivering, as soldiers of Miles Gloriosus, two totally riotous variations of “Ho, there!”
“Everybody Ought to have a Maid” and the reprise of “Lovely” were the production’s comic song standouts.
Czarny went with the abbreviated version of Hysterium’s solo number “I’m Calm”--not unusual in productions of this musical. But he also added the number “Farewell,” which Sondheim wrote for Nancy Walker, who played Domina in the fall 1971 revival of the musical, featuring Phil Silvers as Pseudolus, at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, a production that reached Broadway in 1972. (“Pretty Little Picture” was cut from the production.) But the effect of “Farewell” in the Appleseed production was negligible, interesting only for its novelty.
For Czarny’s set design, it was impossible to achieve a vertical-scale Ancient Rome in the Atonement Church’s basement theater. So this “Funny Thing” spread rather than rise. The set’s depth also didn’t help, but that at least could have been cured by moving the middle of the three houses further downstage, bringing the action closer to the audience. There was also a nub of a thrust that creaked loudly when the actors tread on it.
Jeanette Reyner and Harlow Kisselstein’s costumes were smart and lavish. The pair achieved particularly rich results for Pseudolus, Hysterium, Miles Gloriosus, Tintinabula and Gymnasia’s costumes.
Knee pads and knee braces, blending in with the costumes to the extent they could, on some cast members were completely understandable for what is a very physical musical.
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” A musical with lyrics and score by Stephen Sondheim with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbhart. An Appleseed Productions production directed by Dustin M. Czarny and choreographed by Rachelle Clavin with musical direction by Colin Keating, set by Dustin M. Czarny, lighting by Dan Randall and costumes by Jeanette Reyner and Harlow Kisselstein. Through June 27 at the Atonement Stage, 116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse, N.Y. Tickets: (315) 492-9766 or www.appleseedproductions.org.
Photo: Appleseed Productions. Michael Spinoso Jr., left, as Hysterium and Greg J. Hipius as Pseudolus in Appleseed's production of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
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