by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart
Directed by Des McAnuff
At the Avon Theatre
June 20-November 1, 2009

   Des McAnuff has finally shown his mettle with an uproarious version of what is really a vaudevillian farce about different types and degrees of freedom. A Funny Thing is almost Shakespearean in its plot structure and devices, spinning its far-fetched tale with enough suspensions of disbelief for three comedies. In short, the story concerns a Roman slave, Pseudolus, who tries to win his freedom by contriving the elopement of his master’s young, brainless son Hero and blonde, brainless, virginal Philia already promised to a narcissistic army captain with a distinct penchant for sadism. Filled to the brim with stereotypical characters, coarse jokes and puns, sight gags, mistaken identities, inane patter (often in song), and complicated entanglements, this is a musical that revels in political incorrectness even as it sends up conventions of old Roman comedy and old-fashioned Broadway musicals.

   There’s the old generation versus the young one. There’s the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl pattern. There’s literally a Miles Gloriosus. There are harems of dancing courtesans, risible eunuchs, an unconscionable pimp, slaves, soldiers, a domineering wife and her henpecked husband who would like to be a sly philanderer, a dumb blonde virgin and her almost equally dumb wooer, and an old, doddering, muddled father who goes in search of his long-lost children stolen twenty years ago by pirates. The plot spins madly around such things as magic potions, masquerades, menopausal ardour, and misunderstandings, but the serious point is that assorted characters are attempting to liberate themselves from certain domestic, social, or political constraints so that they can realize their deepest desires or goals. Of course, the serious point has to wrestle out of the firm holds that the farce puts on it. Plautus supplied the original script, but Shevelove and Gelbart tripled the zany fun, with Stephen Sondheim concocting lyrics that run the gamut from the naughtily erotic to the goofily romantic, the inanely sentimental to the rousingly mock-heroic or satiric. It’s a case of sex, drugs, and vaudeville that rocks and rolls.

   When Bruce Dow as Pseudolus was forced to leave the Stratford show after a painful mishap, there was a huge hole in the cast that was not properly filled until Sean Cullen came to the rescue, and now that hole has been plugged, plastered over, and repainted flashily. Mugging with the spirit of a Mostel (who first played the role), deftly timing his punch lines, and acting as zany as any skilled vaudevillian, Cullen supplies the yeast that makes this comic pudding rise, but he is not the only gifted clown in the cast. Randy Hughson’s Senex is dandy when desperately randy, but he is also hilarious in his asides about his domineering wife, a domestic dominatrix who is played to the hilt by Deann deGruijter. Cliff Saunders makes a hysterically rubber-legged and quivering Marcus Lycus, buyer and seller of courtesans, and Stephen Ouimette is priceless as the slave Hysterium, looking for all the world like a wrinkled turnip even in cross-dress as a virgin when he comes to believe that he is lovely. Brian Tree has probably never had cheaper laughs than he does here as Erronius, the old man who has to make seven trips round the seven hills of Rome, but he relishes them blissfully. Mike Nadajewski isn’t quite a natural clown but he does competently as Hero executing a deliriously incompetent dance to show how ardently in love he is with Chilina Kennedy’s deliciously dumb Philia who could easily pass as a Cretan Marilyn Monroe—though with more musical sense than MM. Dan Chameroy was probably born to play Miles Gloriosus as a blond Narcissus (“I am my ideal”), a clunky hunk. The courtesans of Carla Bennett, Sara Topham, Tessa Alves, Eran Goodyear, Jennifer Rias, and Lindsay Croxall are an eyeful, indeed, vibrating in their flamboyantly gymnastic, elastic dances, but mention must also be made of the Proteans (Jordan Bell, Stephen Cota, and especially Julius Sermonia) who play the roles of thirty with as much ineptitude as broad comedy requires.

   From John Arnone’s set design to Dana Osborne’s costumes, and from Kevin Fraser’s lighting to Wayne Cilento’s choreography, this production is a rollicking romp. Director Des McAnuff shows how well steeped he is in vaudeville, and he knows how to up the ante scene by scene, whether it is through pratfalls or pranks, having the Proteans act like three stooges, Miles Gloriosus hurtle in on a run-away chariot, conduct the funeral rites for a dead virgin with bold bad taste, or bump up the mirth of the show-stopping “Everybody Ought To Have a Maid” by gibberish whisperings of his main clowns. His production runs with every joke even as the orchestra races with great zest through the score.

photos: David Hou

pic 1(L-R): Randy Hughson (Semex), Sean Cullen (Pseudolus), Stephen Ouimette (Hysterium) performing "Everybody Ought To Have a Maid"

pic 2 (L-R): Stephen Ouimette (Hysterium), SeanCullen(Pseudolus)

pic 3 (L-R): Cliff Saunders (Marcus Lycus), Chilina Kennedy (Philia), Dan Chameroy (Miles Gloriosus), Brian Tree (Erronius)



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