A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

This production would have been a lot of fun, had the show not been cancelled.  As it was, the run was abandoned and everyone stood down, then the company was brought back together to stage what would have been the final dress rehearsal but in front of an audience.  The result, as you might expect, was somewhat chaotic, but still a lot of fun.

Let’s deal with some of the causes of chaos: the ‘rehearsal’ was held in St Marks hall.  The venue has a decent stage, but not wide enough to cope with the three houses central to the plot, so it was played on the floor of the hall, with the three houses represented by blacks hung from rails.  This worked remarkably well, although back stage moves to entrances happened in full view of the audience.  The biggest downside was that the audience didn’t get a good view of Hysterium (Michael Pickford) in a bridal gown lying on a low bench, playing dead, thus missing the visual parts of a very comical scene.  Further chaos was provided by Pseudolus (Neil Brookes) and Marcus Lycus (Steve Tuddenham) who, when they were on stage together, seemed to take a very funny but rather circuitous approach to the script.

Emily-Jane Charge reprised the role of Philia (which I had last seen her play with New Forest Players in 2007) with Adam Davis as the love-lorn Hero.  They suffered a bit from the scratch venue - with only a small number of boundary mics, the sound was rather uneven and very sensitive to a turn of the singer’s head.  In that respect, Marie Coltman had a better time of it as Domina, taking her voice within a single line from soft and sweet to a bellow at the put-upon Senex (Dennis Osment).  In my view, Andy McGivney was a bit too dignified as the conquering soldier Miles Gloriosus - just on the grounds that the more pompously over-the-top the character is played, the funnier he gets.

The production added a bit of extra comedy to ‘Everybody ought to have a maid’ by having one of the Proteans (Jack Sutton, I think), dressed as a maid in a mop cap, dusting the set.  The rest of the visual comedy was well to the fore, and the daft chase sequences worked remarkably well, given the limited space available.  The more formal choreography worked well too - I thought the Geminae (from Marcus Lycus’s house of pecuniary dalliance) were particularly good at the land-based version of synchronised swimming.

Given what was produced in the hall, I think it would have been worth the risk of taking it to production.  However, whilst the show is a good one - usually very popular with audiences, once the word gets about - it’s not as easy for the company to sell as some productions.  It’s a relatively small cast, and it’s dominated by the role of Pseudolus, so more difficult for company members to market than an ensemble piece with a large chorus.

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