Audio By Carbonatix
The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League (PHAMALy) has launched another hit–a lively production of Stephen Sondheim’s bawdy musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This time, director Don Bill’s experiments get outrageous. Some of his choices are tasteless–a bit too far over the top for “family” entertainment. But more often, his moxie pays off big-time. He doesn’t hide his performers’ disabilities, he uses them–and this is one frank, funny, loudmouthed piece of work.
The story, by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, concerns a slave, Pseudolus, who wants nothing more than his freedom and is prepared to do anything to get it. But all his young master wants is the hand of a young courtesan, so to buy his freedom, Pseudolus must obtain Philia for Hero (Cory Laidlaw, nicely moonstruck). Alas, Philia (played as a sweet featherbrain by the lovely Katrina Weber) has already been sold to a captain of the Roman Legion, Miles Gloriosus (James Hubbard is a powerful asset to the show as the vainglorious captain).
Meanwhile, Hero’s mom, Domina, needs to visit her sick mother out in the country and gives strict orders to her own slave, Hysterium, to keep Hero away from the girls. But Hysterium’s anxious stewardship is no match for Pseudolus’s talent for chaos or for his wily plots. And Pseudolus soon hatches a plan to keep the daffy young lovers together, trick the arrogant Gloriosus out of his bride, and generally raise cain.
Gregg Vigil makes a fine lecherous old man as Senex, Hero’s dad, and Linda Ottke brings just the right touch of pathos and crankiness to the role of Domina. Lucy Roucis as the gum-chewing working girl, Gymnasia, is always a treat to watch–she’s sexy, sweet and completely comfortable on stage.
Troy Willis is definitely growing as an actor, and his performance as the hysterical Hysterium (in and out of drag) makes a marvelous counterpart to Mark Dissette’s screwy antics as Pseudolus. These two guys form the heart of the whole show, but it’s Dissette’s dizzy vigor that makes it all hang together. He literally conducts all the action, pulling off a prosthetic limb here, guiding a blind actor to the right spot there, or offering a steadying hand whenever necessary.
Some of the music is a tad tuneless, but other numbers are memorable Sondheim. The opening song, “Comedy Tonight,” sets the theme of the evening with its raucous hilarity, full-company energy and bright, charming melody. Sondheim once said that the songs could be removed from this show and nobody would know the difference. That’s perhaps an exaggeration, but the anti-sentimental goofiness of the farce (based loosely on a work by the Roman comic playwright Titus Plautus) still works. And because director Bill celebrates his actors for who they are, he puts the audience at ease.
If, once or twice, Bill mistakes just who that audience is (there is one potent bit of business related to oral sex that is just too much for children), he at least takes seriously the performers’ full sexuality. The lightning-quick choreography by Debbie Stark–incorporating wheelchairs for their speed as well as their maneuverability–is exhilarating. The pace of the whole show leaves the viewer feeling lighthearted and, finally, uplifted by the spectacle of can-do talent defying the odds.
–Mason
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, through August 11 at The Space Theatre, in the Plex at 14th and Curtis, 575-0005.