From rye to wry: how a Borscht Belt show lost its schtick in Paris

Does Sondheim’s farce “Forum” still work with a droll Brit as Pseudolus?

Shalom, Broadway lovers!

In today’s monthly FREE Premium edition of the Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast, a review of Paris’s current, less schtick-y production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; a Mateo Chavez Lewis Piano Talk about “My Shot” from Hamilton; a list of my 10 favorite stories in three years of the Blast; a review of Peter Filichia’s new Broadway brainteaser book; a 10-minute version of Gypsy; and a Last Blast about Rent.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Welcome to year four of The Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast! This issue introduces Mateo Chavez Lewis’s quickfire “Weekly Blast Piano Talks,” a look at the music theory behind important shows, starting with Hamilton. Also in 2024, you can expect more Broadway analysis, history, videos, quizzes, and reviews of international productions large and small. I’m returning to Paris in March to see Rocky Horror and the French adaptation of The Lion King and I’ll be back to Broadway and the West End, of course. I also have my eye on Sarah Brightman’s turn as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Sydney Opera House in the fall, and I already have my July tickets to see Come from Away where it all began: in Gander, Newfoundland. After three years, The Weekly Blast now has 9,200 subscribers and 1.7 million views. With so much promising content on the horizon, how about purchasing a Premium subscription? And if you’re not ready for that, how about giving this issue a “like” by pressing ❤️ above?

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SAVE THE DATE: Registration for a FREE class on ”Jewish Lyricists on Broadway”is now open. Monday, January 29 at both Noon and 7 pm ET.

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REVIEW: When in Rome…

The current Paris production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a funny, fun farce – but this time there’s a difference. The show’s usual schticky sensibility has been replaced by a more droll, British wit.

It’s a radically revised vision for this exuberant 1962 Broadway show, which according to Sondheim biographer Steven M. Silverman, “owes more to the post-war Borscht Belt than Plautian Rome.”

The change became necessary after American Jewish funnyman Richard Kind (Curb Your Enthusiasm, A Serious Man) left the show just a few weeks before its opening (he emphasized to me that his exit was “artistic” and his Jewishness was not “in the equation”).

Given such little time, director Cal McCrystal (“physical comedy director” of the hilarious 2011 British show One Man, Two Guv’nors) improvised with the cast he had. He promoted a British actor in a supporting role, Rufus Hound, to Kind’s role of lead character Pseudolus. Then, he chose to shape the role to the Essex-born actor’s strengths, rather than try to make Hound into Zero Mostel, the manically boisterous Ashkenazi Jewish actor who originated the role on Broadway.

I asked McCrystal about making Forum less Jewish, and he told me he regretted having to do that. “My show does miss that kind of Borscht Belt style of delivery,” he said. “But I do think the absolute essence and all the funny stuff is still in there.”

So is he right? Does a schtick-free Forum work?

Well, I saw the show over the weekend, and came back two more times because I liked it so much. However, my enjoyment was certainly because of the show’s many strengths and not because I was happy the “mishugass” (Yiddish for madness) was missing.

As Pseudolus (the Roman slave who tries to win freedom by playing matchmaker to his master Hero), Hound gives a fresh interpretation. He has great comedic chops, but a thoroughly British sensibility (one night he made a series of Dr. Who jokes). He wittily interacts with the audience about not-being-French and has particularly good chemistry with the actors playing Hero and his fellow slave Hysterium.

But given the iconic history of the role, Hound’s performance certainly felt “less than Zero” (Mostel), and, for that matter, the other three over-the-top New Yorkers who won Tonys for playing Pseudolus: Phil Silvers, Jason Alexander, and Nathan Lane.

The musical, last seen on Broadway in the 1990s, is being performed at Paris’s historic Lido, with patrons seated at tables (yes!) surrounding the spare-set stage on three sides. That intimacy facilitates a lot of audience interaction. For example, when I was sheepishly caught taking notes, one of the actors proclaimed, “Monsieur le critic, give us four stars.” And a man in a toga reminded a woman that cell phones were centuries away from being invented.

Forum is performed in English. But of course – because maintaining the deliciously witty nature of Sondheim’s lyrics (“today I woke too weak to walk”) in a foreign language is nigh-impossible. In fact, while the supertitles translated some rhymes well, most of the wordplay was lost to Gallic ears.

Indeed, the show’s dialogue and Sondheim’s lyrics are SO well-crafted that English speakers too can miss some lovely subtleties and even explicit jokes. So the audience’s silence at “You’ll be a eunuch all your life” (normally a guaranteed laugh line) represented linguistic befuddlement, not a weakness in the line’s delivery or (gods forbid) its quality.

But there’s also a lot about the show that’s French. Watch for heavy doses of mime – including the entire first five minutes of the show and a naughty bit about sexual positions. The Proteans (who take on many supporting roles) make a lot of bilingual puns, like calling a donkey “Princess Anne” (âne meaning donkey). Some of these jokes were clearly improvised (they varied from one performance to the next).

Well beyond the comic style of the actors, there’s lots to laugh at on stage. This comedy (tonight) is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it production, so keep your eyes peeled for an Ethiopian contortionist, a ventriloquist’s monkey, a robot turtle, prosthetic testicles, a dubbed Star Wars joke, and toga-clad orchestra members.

I understand that many Sondheim purists will be horrified by the radical shifts in the show’s direction. But since it doesn’t seem the director had any more appealing casting options, it’s nice to know The Master’s first-produced lyrics-and-music show is robust enough to adjust to even the most radical reinterpretations and still be completely entertaining.

See this play! (S’il vous plait.)

What do you think of the idea of a non-schtick Forum? Comment below.

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PIANO TALK: In the video below, Mateo kicks off this feature with a close look at “My Shot” from Hamilton. He explains how “shot” is a musical term that fits perfectly. My favorite part: as an illustration he plays Sondheim’s “Being Alive” from Company as if it had been written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

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LOOKING BACK: Here’s a list of the 10 Weekly Blast issues I’m most proud of since 2021, listed in reverse order. What was your favorite issue of the Weekly Blast? Put your answers in the comments:

10. The unsung hero of Les Miz (Herbert Kretzmer, the English lyricist behind the show's success)

9. Eureka! Six Surprising Sondheim Blasts (Quick, deep dives on Stephen Sondheim’s body of work)

8. The racial politics of Annie’s color (Controversy casting the famous red-headed orphan)

7. No more "Hairspray" fat suits (Editorial: Let heavy actresses play Tracy Turnblad)

6. London’s “Old Friends” revue: saying Kaddish for Sondheim? (Review of a terrific Sondheim tribute show)

5. Tony winner Kimberly Akimbo is aging nicely (Ringing endorsement of the most recent Best Musical winner)

4. Scoot over, Tevye: “Harmony” is Broadway’s next great Jewish musical (Last week’s issue)

3. The puzzling mind of Stephen Sondheim (Deciphering The Master’s cryptic crosswords)

2. "Parade" isn't just about anti-Semitism (Deeply analytical, if a bit shocking)

1. SPECIAL ISSUE: Going deep "Into the Woods" (Fun, detailed analysis of my favorite show)

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REVIEW: You’ll be stumped. A lot.

In a challenging new book, Brainteasers for Broadway Geniuses, Peter Filichia presents 500 tough multi-part puzzles that even Broadway Mavens will have a hard time answering (yeah, I only got eleven of them fully right).

(Full disclosure: Peter is a longtime member of the Broadway Maven team.)

This is not a “trivia book” quizzing basic knowledge of shows, lyrics, or performers. Instead, it’s an easy-to-read but difficult-to-answer compendium of queries about Broadway musicals and plays. An example:

Q: The opening number of a Sondheim Best Musical Tony-winner (and Best Musical Revival Tony-winner) actually happens to mention the title of a previous Sondheim musical. What’s the name of the song? What’s the name of the musical that is mentioned in another context?

A: In Company, Joanne and Larry in the opening title song sing, “Bob, we’re having people in Saturday night” – and Saturday Night was indeed the title of a previous Sondheim musical, although it wasn’t produced until decades later.

The book’s appeal is not “testing your knowledge” but watching Peter draw unexpected connections between the hundreds of shows he knows intimately. You’ll learn which five shows have a song that mentions Fred Astaire (Anything Goes, Pal Joey, Bells Are Ringing, Miss Saigon, Fiorello!) and the fact that while You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown played Broadway in 1999, a show with the number “Charlie Brown” (Smokey Joe’s Café), was also on the boards.

Caution: Not every observation will “wow” you; musicals with Tony winners whose surnames start with “Mc,” for example, or what month shows opened. But the book’s breadth will leave you consistently entertained and educated.

My main complaint about this book (not Peter’s fault!) is the binding, which was so flimsy that 15 pages fell out of the 226-page book. True, I gave it (mild) wear-and-tear checking the answers in the back, but that’s no excuse for publishing a crumbling brand-new book. Consider buying the Kindle version.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Last year, the Premium version of the Weekly Blast published more than 40 Peter Filichia’s Broadway videos of 3-5 minutes in length analyzing various past Broadway shows. That playlist is now available to non-Premium subscribers.

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BROADWAY MAVEN VIDEO: Here’s a fun 10-minute version of Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne’s Gypsy.

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Note: links to register for ALL classes are always available at TheBroadwayMaven.com.

• Monday, January 29 Noon and 7 pm ET: “Jewish Lyricists” (FREE)

• Sunday, February 4, 2024 from Noon to 1 pm: “Funny Broadway” begins with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (registration opens soon)

• Tuesday, February 6, 2024 from Noon to 1 pm: “Sondheim Academy” begins with “Sondheim’s Identities” (registration opens soon)

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LAST BLAST: Happy New Year! What does “Seasons of Love,” the iconic Act Two opener in Rent, mean? Though the song lists different ways to measure a year (“cups of coffee”; “miles”; “laughter”) it settles on “love as the right answer. But what is the WRONG answer, according to the song? Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. Given the widespread illness, poverty, and discrimination the characters face, a song prioritizing relationships over time resonates with the musical’s message of “no day but today.” One possible caveat: the show ends with a focus on time. When Mimi is in her death throes, Angel sends her back, encouraging her to continue her relationship with Roger rather than pass on.

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Broadway Maven David Benkof helps students further their appreciation of musical theater through his classes, his YouTube channel, and his Weekly Blast. Contact him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.