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This week's spotlight shines on May 8, 1962, when A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened at what is now the Neil Simon.
As presented on Broadway, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum made its intentions clear from the get-go, and everyone benefitted from that. It's true that "Comedy Tonight" replaced not one, but two ill-fated opening numbers, but you know what they say about trying again.
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I always feel like I underappreciate Forum. In my defense, almost everyone involved with the show had at least one or two other essential contributions to theater and/or pop culture. It's not Forum's fault for having a team including composer Stephen Sondheim, director George Abbott, show doctor Jerome Robbins, star Zero Mostel, featured actors like Jack Gilford, David Burns, John Carradine and Ruth Kobart, producer Harold Prince, and book writers Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. That's a murderer's row of talent, and most of them were honored with Tonys. Carradine wasn't nominated and, of course, neither was Robbins. Nor Plautus, whose plays inspired Forum. Gilford lost the featured actor in a musical award to Burns, while Kobart as a featured actress to Anna Quayle for her four roles in Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off.
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Running for more than two years on Broadway, or just under 1,000 performances, Forum was actually a sort of documentary according to Walter Kerr, then with the New York Herald Tribune. The show had "an astonishingly thorough and reasonably reliable index" of every item in Plautus' arsenal. It also served as a definitive catalog of vaudeville-style comedy. The men involved with Forum knew a joke when they saw one, Kerr said. "... and they (saw) about five or six hundred."
Forum has been revived twice to date on Broadway: in 1972 with Phil Silvers, and in 1996 with Nathan Lane. Pseudolus has also been performed by Dick Shawn (in 1964), Tom Poston (1972), Mickey Rooney (1987 national tour), Jason Alexander (1989, in Jerome Robbins' Broadway), Whoopi Goldberg and David Alan Grier (1997) and Rip Taylor (1998-99 bus and truck tour). While Carol Burnett ended up not joining the last revival as Pseudolus, she did perform "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" in Putting It Together.
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Yesterday, I posed the question of if there's still anyone capable of playing Pseudolus. Ideally, it wouldn't be James Corden, who was linked to a possible Broadway revival in the mid-2010s. Later on, I thought about Martin Short, although at this point, I think he'd be better as Hysterium, Gilford's role.
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With all due respect to Silvers, Alexander, Lane, and such on, maybe you just can't beat the original. Take it away, Zero.
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Also debuting on this day:
Stalag 17, which opened in 1951 at the 48th Street Theatre, which was demolished in 1955. The Hard Rock Hotel New York currently stands there. José Ferrer won the Tony for directing this play about the tension that arises when American sergeants in a German POW camp suspect one of them is an informant. It later became a 1953 Billy Wilder film that won William Holden the Oscar for Best Actor. Playwrights Donald Bevan (later the Sardi's caricaturist) and Edmund Trzcinski went on to file an infringement suit against the producers of Hogan's Heroes. The jury ruled in favor of the writers, but it was overruled by a federal judge.
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The Roast, which opened in 1980 at the Winter Garden. This was not a successful play -- it closed two days after opening -- but I think it deserves a mention as the last Broadway credits for director Carl Reiner and star Peter Boyle (playing a Jerry Lewis type, or at least splitting that persona with Doug McClure), the only Broadway credit to date for costar Rob Reiner (playing a George Carlin type), and the first Broadway credits for playwrights Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall. Belson later had Smile adapted into a musical. The same happened posthumously for Marshall with Pretty Woman. The Roast, which had various character actors playing other takeoffs of recognizable comedians, sounds like an interesting read.
Private Lives, which was revived in 1983 at the Lunt-Fontanne. Another brief runner, with a July 17, 1983, closure, this production gets mentioned for climaxing more than 20 years of "Liz & Dick." Elizabeth Taylor would enter rehab soon after. Richard Burton died the following year.
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Doubles, which opened in 1985 at what is now the Walter Kerr. John Cullum, Ron Leibman, Austin Pendleton, and Tony Roberts starred in this comedy about four friends who play tennis together and kvetch about their lives. It's the only Broadway credit for playwright David Wiltse. Frank Rich felt that Doubles was so much of a sitcom, all it needed was superimposed end credits. Replacement cast members included Robert Reed, who succeeded Roberts, then went on to launch the national tour with, among others, Gabe Kaplan (who played Leibman's role). Reed was succeeded on the tour by Martin Milner.
Radio Golf, which opened in 2007 at what is now the James Earl Jones. This makes the list for being the first August Wilson production on Broadway after his 2005 death. Set in the '90s, Golf concludes the Pittsburgh Cycle with a look at gentrification.
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Next week, you can't buck a nun, but you can sure share the stage with her.
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