A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum review – newfangled and fantastic

The epitome of musical comedy as a genre and Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway hit as composer and lyricist, this 1962 tuner enjoyed, for a while, the sort of mainstream success – international productions, a film version, several high profile revivals – that initially eluded some of the maestro’s more sophisticated later offerings. Tastes change however, and the sexual politics and depictions of women in Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart’s laugh-a-minute book, derived equally from the classical Roman comedies of Plautus and the old school American burlesque circuit, seem nowadays not so much unreconstructed as antediluvian. Also, with its emphasis on patter songs and humour, Sondheim’s score isn’t perhaps held in such high esteem as his more ambitious, sobersided work on shows like Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd etc.

Cal McCrystal’s rumbustious new production in Paris, performed in English with French surtitles, addresses the former issue at the top of the show by having Rufus Hound’s freedom-seeking slave Pseudolus point out that A Funny ThingHappened On The Way To The Forum is an ancient story filtered through the talents of a group of 1960s white men and that times have indeed changed, so our indulgence is craved. As for the latter, Larry Blank’s revised orchestrations for sixteen pieces sound so vital, finding the sweet spot between brassiness and delicacy, and the voices delivering MD Gareth Valentine’s new arrangements are so fine and characterful, that the songs fairly leap off the stage with renewed vigour and sparkle. This may not be Sondheim’s most fascinating collection of numbers but it has seldom, if ever, sounded this fabulous.

There are some lovely melodic moments (one of the more lyrical numbers is literally called “Lovely”) but overall, and unusually in the Sondheim canon, the score is predominantly at the service of the comin’-atcha comic chaos of the book rather than the other way around. The music is fiendishly catchy though…good luck with getting the exhilarating “Comedy Tonight” full company opening number and the skilfully built-up “Everybody Ought To Have A Maid” comedy quartet out of your head for days after you’ve heard them.

This Forum looks pretty gorgeous too: Tim Hatley’s set of a trio of revolving neoclassical towers, colour coded to denote three houses, two of Roman noblemen and one of ill-repute, is an attractive backdrop to the frenetic action, providing the requisite doors, windows and concealment places to facilitate the mechanics of farce. Even the footlights are funny, since they are exactly that, a line of disembodied sandal-wearing feet along the front of the stage. The costumes by takis range from flowing Greco-Roman floatiness to the garishly outlandish, topped off by a succession of vivid, sometimes deliberately preposterous, wigs that contribute to the overall visual impression of a cartoon sprung to colourful life.

McCrystal has created a dazzling, crazy total world for the show, one where every cast member is in on the joke and inhabiting the same lunatic universe. The consistency of tone is essential, and entirely successful. Chattering eunuchs in black bobbed wigs and pink nappies roam the front stalls looking for audience participation victims, a sizzling parade of courtesans performing physically astounding feats is impressive but strangely intimidating, slave-owning Senex’s overbearing, overdramatic wife Domina (opera singer Valérie Gabail, fiercely majestic) communicates exclusively through alternately bellowing and coloratura soprano, and David Benson’s peddler gets a life-enhancing sequence of inspired shtick involving his beloved donkey, Princess Anne. Sounds bonkers? Well, yes it is, and wilfully anachronistic, but my goodness it’s funny. Like, roof-raisingly, seat-shakingly, belly-laughingly hilarious, so good in fact that even if the musical aspect of the production weren’t as first rate as it is, this would still be a successful version. As it stands, it’s basically an embarrassment of riches, and it moves at a cracking pace.

McCrystal’s achievement is all the more remarkable because the wide open apron stage of the Lido is antithetical to this sort of comedy, better suited really to showy spectacle. We get that as well, in Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s inventive, athletic choreography, wildly different from her award-winning work on Six but no less successful. At one point, the cavernous playing space yawns open to reveal dancing fountains and the chorus attired as giant flowers; it’s a follies-style effect, as sumptuous as it is delightfully unexpected, that doesn’t really add anything to the musical yet feels appropriate as a tribute to this particular venue’s storied showbiz past.

Then there’s the cast, a bunch of the sort of rudely talented, instinctively hilarious talents that the term “funny bones” was invented for. Hound is an ideal Pseudolus, the incorrigible, slovenly slave who narrates and drives the plot. Hound makes him a charming chancer, a warm, mischievous presence and a lovable bridge between the audience and the joyfully unhinged dramatis personae. Whether berating a predominantly French crowd for not getting the jokes fast enough or frantically setting up romantic trysts between his air-headed young master (an entrancingly gormless Josh St Clair) and Philia, a virgin courtesan newly arrived from Crete and promised to a powerful army chief, his rapport with the audience is wonderful. Andrew Pepper’s fellow slave Hysterium is a marvellously hangdog sidekick.

There are invaluable, inspirationally silly contributions from Patrick Ryecart, David Rintoul and Martyn Ellis as a trio of affluent elders for whom the advancing years have done nothing to quell their vanity and general cluelessness. John Owen-Jones is good comic and vocal value as histrionic, hair-tossing warrior Miles Gloriosus, but could afford to go even bigger and further.

Although it’s a predominantly male oriented team, the women in the company make potent impressions. Gabail’s querulous Domina, with a magnificent prosthetic nose, mountainous wig and surely one of the longest farewell songs in any Broadway musical, is a glorious creation, and each of the courtesans is a distinctive, powerful presence. Best of all is Neima Naouri as the enchanting but vacant Philia (“I’m lovely, all I am is lovely, lovely is the one thing I can do”), erroneously launching herself at all the wrong men, her divine features untroubled by coherent thought. Naouri has the comic instincts of a young Bette Midler, an astonishing singing voice that can belt like a diva or hit crystalline soprano notes, and is just knowing enough to prevent from being problematic this depiction of a young woman so clock-stoppingly dim. She’s a real find.

Quirkier, less earthbound and better sung than the 2004 National Theatre production, this is the sort of show that sends audiences out into the night weak from laughter and with faces aching from smiling. It’s already completely irresistible, and will probably become slicker and even more delirious as the run progresses: Parisians may notice an influx of uncommonly happy people on the Champs-Élysées over the next few months.