Nineteen sixty-two was too late for vaudeville, and surely the Roman comedies of Plautus were known only by Latin academics. But with the debut of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, these two great comedy epochs were inextricably linked right from the first notes of “Comedy Tonight,” one of the great opening numbers of any musical.

Instead of introducing us to the characters or putting the plot in motion, it seeks only to tell the audience what kind of show they’re about to see. The song is a litany of quick, descriptive rhymes (erratic/dramatic, convulsive/repulsive, surprises/disguises) that set only mood, a lightning bolt of perfection instigated by choreographer and show doctor Jerome Robbins after two prior songs had been discarded out of town.

It’s ironic that Forum delivered such a show-stopping standard in the first five minutes, since it has been confirmed by composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim that his show’s songs were meant to give audiences a respite from laughing, as had songs in the theatre of Plautus. While Sondheim is repeatedly critical of Forum’s score in his book of annotated lyrics, Finishing the Hat, it has considerable charm, most notably “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” a paean to feminine domestic help, replete with built-in encores.

When first I saw the film version directed by Richard Lester, I got a taste of what the whole show might be. But I’ll admit to some disappointment, generated perhaps because I was watching alone, perhaps because film is the enemy of spontaneity, perhaps because the fully realistic design was fighting the complete artificiality that is farce. It did, however, blend Broadway originals Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford with Michaels Hordern and Crawford.

It was only when I was at university, and cast in the supporting role of henpecked, randy husband Senex in a dramatic society production, that I came to know Forum fully – and to realise that bookwriters Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart were the true masterminds, even though by then I had completely fallen for Sondheim via Sweeney Todd.

Forum’s criss-crossing plots – the slave Pseudolus’s desire to be a free man, the Roman boy Hero’s search for love, the virgin Philia’s resignation to a life bound to a man by contract, Hysterium’s impotent efforts to keep order, Erronius’s search for his lost children – built one upon the other. This carefully wrought framework made room for leggy chorus girls, repeatedly mistaken identities, well-honed schtick and some wonderfully low puns. Whatever the merits of that college production, the show’s brilliant construction ensured that we were met by gales of laughter each night.

Convulsed audiences seem almost guaranteed in Forum – theatre history bears out its Broadway success originally with Mostel and a decade later in revival with Phil Silvers, then two decades after that with Nathan Lane, followed by Whoopi Goldberg. Frankie Howerd launched the show in London in 1963 and now another British comic favourite, James Corden is rumoured for the forthcoming Broadway revival. The talk of Corden seems both genius and a no-brainer, since One Man, Two Guvnors‘ Francis Henshall is a direct spiritual descendent of Pseudolus in his appetites, his self-made muddles and his manipulative ingenuity under pressure.

There is perhaps something perverse in championing Forum, since it flouts so much of what we’re told a musical should do. The songs say little about the characters, and don’t advance the story. It requires choreography, but demands little true dancing. In its emphasis on plotting, it does away with music altogether in the latter half of the second act (as does another favourite, plot-heavy musical, 1776). But Forum, a couple of millennia after Plautus and more than a half-century since its debut, is a marvel of gleefully saucy yet wholly innocent vintage and modern farce that wants nothing more than to leave you spent from laughter, humming a catchy tune. What’s not to love about that?

as originally seen in The Guardian

Timberlane High Performing Arts Center

I have just returned from a trip to Plaistow, New Hampshire, where I went to support students, parents, alumni and members of the community who wanted to speak out against the cancelation of a production of Sweeney Todd at Timberlane High School, announced for production a year ago, but scheduled for 2015. In the wake of the response to the cancelation, the school scheduled an open forum to hear from the community on the issue. This was an important and rare step, since each and every decision of school administrators cannot possibly be opened to organized public discussion, with the media present as well.

But in creating the opportunity, the administrators of Timberlane opened the door to two-and-a-half hours of speaker after speaker extolling the caliber of the show, the importance of theatre in their lives, and how deeply connected they are to the school’s arts program.  Despite the opportunity, no one spoke up against the show. Even though some apparently made their feelings known privately to the administration, or in letters to local papers and on blogs, none would stand to say so in front of their peers in a public setting.

Because I don’t like to give speeches except when I’m invited to do so, I spoke at the session off the cuff, based on what I’d learned about the issue and the community in the days and hours leading up to the event in the high school cafeteria, attempting to address concerns specific to Timberlane. I want to share my remarks with you, with all of the imperfections of impromptu speech. I hope I spoke some sense and maybe even some truth.

The superintendent indicated he would render his decision very shortly, and as I write, a community awaits, as do I.

*   *   *

Into the woods – you have to grope
But that’s the way you learn to cope
Into the woods to find there’s hope
Of getting through the journey.
Into the woods, each time you go
There’s more to learn of what you know…

Those are the words of Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim is the greatest composer of musical theatre in the past 50 years and possibly in the history of the American musical theatre. His work deserves to be seen and while his work has never been known to as somebody to easily please audiences, the challenge that he presents to every audience is a special challenge for students.

I’ve come up from New York to represent to you that there are people far beyond this community who care about each and every student who wants a great experience in the arts. I don’t do it because I believe that every student in every drama club will go on and become a professional artist. Indeed, I suspect most of them won’t. I come here because I want better audiences for the arts and by being involved in the most challenging work at this stage in their lives, those who take part in his work, those who see this work, become better audiences so that we can have better arts.

You have an extraordinary performing arts center – I’m still in awe of that turntable, I’ve never seen anything like it – and with a facility like that you should be able to use it to its fullest.

No, you can’t please everyone all of the time. I’m amazed to find the number of performances that you have here. In the case of this show, it will not please everyone, it never has. But it is a masterwork of musical theatre. The original cast recording was just announced to be inducted into the Library of Congress today.

People like to focus on the more lurid aspects of Sweeney Todd. But Sweeney Todd is not about its actions; Sweeney Todd is about morality, about justice, about the lengths people will go to and the lengths they’re driven to when they face injustice.

No, I would not bring a seven year old to Sweeney Todd. But I believe and I am told that there are many other opportunities in this community for people of all ages at different times to have different experiences. This is not – and I do know this script, I know this script particularly well – that you are not proposing to do the original script. Stephen Sondheim has authorized a school edition of Sweeney Todd which removes some of the material which would be difficult for high schools to endorse or for students to perform. It’s not neutered but it is toned down. Countless high schools do this show every year across the country. The students here should be able to have the opportunities that their peers, who they will be facing when they go on to college, had at their schools.

There are many stories of school shows which are canceled at the last minute. This is by no means the case – you have a year. You have a year to place the show in context, to inform not just in the students in the drama club, but all of the students, all of the parents, all of this community, through a range of educational activities that can be put into place. Other schools have done it. I pledge myself as a resource to help you find what’s been done elsewhere, what’s been successful and even people who can come in and help with those programs. Nobody would walk into this show and be surprised by what is happening. Frankly, given what has surrounded this in the past week, I think we’re past that.

Fundamentally, I believe student theatre is first and foremost for the students who make it and then if there is there is the opportunity for people beyond their family members to come and see it, that’s fantastic. But the experience is for the students. That’s what school is for.

I truly hope that a year from now, I will be driving back up from the city to see Sweeney Todd.

Stephen Sondheim is a vastly smarter man than I am, so I will finish again with his words.

Careful with what you say,

Children will listen.
Careful you do it too.
Children will see.
And learn.
Guide them but step away,
And children will glisten.
Tamper with what is true,
And children will turn,
If just to be free.
The more you protect them,
The more they reject you.
The more you reflect them,
The more they respect you.

Thank you very much.

*   *   *

Update, April 10: I am delighted to report that late this afternoon, Dr. Earl Metzler of the Timberlane School District reversed the decision to cancel Sweeney Todd and the show is now back on the Timberlane High schedule for 2015. The decision came about thanks to the respectful yet passionate efforts of the students and parents of Timberlane and members of the greater Plaistow community. I look forward to seeing them once again, and my favorite musical, a year from now.

Kirstie: tragedy tomorrow, travesty tonight

Outside of the annual Tony Awards broadcast, theatre is not a subject frequently dealt with on national television. So the next six days might be one of the richest confluences of theatre-related programming in recent memory, with three separate programs with roots in the theatre coming through America’s cable boxes between now and Monday night.

That said, I must immediately dash any expectations that the first of these programs in any way proves of benefit to theatre in America. Premiering tonight on TV Land, the series Kirstie features Cheers alumnus Kirstie Alley as the veteran star of 14 Broadway plays who, in the first episode, is reunited with the now-adult son she gave up for adoption in his infancy. That the show is a poor excuse for a sitcom is beyond my declared expertise, so I’ll contain my comments to its representation of theatrical life.

Kirstie is a show that seems to have been made by people who have watched movies about the theatre, and their creative liberties have been magnified into absurdity. Alley’s character lives in an apartment that seems sprung from 30s or 40s plays like The Royal Family, Accent On Youth or Old Acquaintance. Her career supports a full time personal assistant as well as a driver; there’s a chef in the pilot but he has disappeared in the three subsequent episodes available for review. How many stage stars can manage that? Could she have family money that would explain the largesse? Perhaps. But there’s no excuse for her decision, in the final moments of the opening night performance of her newest play, to delay the final curtain by adding dialogue meant as a declaration of affection for her once-abandoned son. It is patently absurd.

It’s worth noting that the series’ creator, Marco Pennette, has exercised his love of theatre on TV before, albeit through a supporting character. On the late 90s sitcom Caroline in the City, Amy Pietz played an actress who was appearing in the musical Cats, late in its long Broadway run. This afforded many sly and knowing digs at tired Broadway musicals that may well have been lost on much of the audience, but which jollied along those of us who watched primarily for Malcolm Gets’ performance. Kirstie offers little that sly beyond naming Rhea Perlman’s personal assistant character Thelma, a nod to the role played by Thelma Ritter in All About Eve. The only saving grace is that after the first two episodes, Kirstie’s depiction of theatre seems to become a footnote in the series, although Kristin Chenoweth’s cameo as an Eve Harrington type in the second show carries a bit of welcome snap that elevates the leaden comedy as much as possible (there’s also a terrific guest shot by Cloris Leachman as Alley’s estranged mother). But, in short, Kirstie makes Smash look like a documentary.

The second offering is the much promoted live broadcast of The Sound of Music, with Carrie Underwood leading the cast as Maria. Because it will be done live, it’s impossible to make any judgments, though I’m sure the commentary will be flying fast and furious during and after the broadcast on social media; I have already seen critiques of the cast recording, which was being streamed by Spotify yesterday.

Unlike almost everyone in the country, apparently, I am one of the very few who has never seen The Sound of Music, so I’ll be able to take the broadcast on its own terms. Yes, you read that right: I’ve never seen the show on stage and I’ve only seen snippets of the film (specifically Julie Andrews’ opening mountaintop twirl, the “Do Re Mi” and “16 Going on 17” numbers, and the final sequence with Von Trapp singing Edelweiss and the family’s subsequent escape). But I’m very pleased that there will be a version of the stage show to sit alongside the film for posterity, allowing fans and musical theatre students to get a sense of how a show can be altered for its screen incarnation (it joins Rent in this category). While the NBC presentation will be a peculiar hybrid of TV and theatre (it’s being produced for TV as if it were a stage production, though it is a one night only event that will play in person only for technicians, sans audience and audience reactions), I suspect it will prompt me to see the movie at long last, to make my own comparisons.

Audra McDonald in Six By Sondheim

Capping this trilogy, on Monday night, is the HBO documentary Six By Sondheim, directed by James Lapine and produced by (among others) former New York Times drama critic and lifelong musical theatre buff and expert Frank Rich. While the roughly 80 minute program makes the shrewd decision to focus musically on only six significant Sondheim songs, it casts a much wider net over the composer’s life and process than the title might suggest. It admirably features but a single talking head (in contrast to so many documentaries): that of Sondheim himself, drawn from a wide range of interviews over several decades. I was impressed to hear Sondheim, ever the wordsmith, drop “concatenate” and “serendipity” into a single sentence – no wonder this guy is the eminence grise of composer-lyricists, perhaps never to be equaled.

While his interrogators are mostly excised, there’s really something to be said for any show which manages to embrace moderators as diverse as Diane Sawyer, Tony Kushner and Mike Douglas and which squeezes in clips of performers like Cher and Patti LaBelle singing “Send In The Clowns” (LaBelle proves that, unlike Glynis Johns, she really knows how to hold a note). Another asset of the show is the newly produced performances of, among others, “I’m Still Here” (by Jarvis Cocker) and “Opening Doors” (with Jeremy Jordan, America Ferrara, Darren Criss, Laura Osnes and Sondheim himself as the producer seeking a “hummable melody”) which vary greatly in visual style thanks to contributions by different directors for each, most notably Todd Haynes.

A prized personal possession

As a big fan of Sondheim, but something short of a rabid one, the program certainly includes tales and tidbits I’d heard before, but packaged as elegantly as one could ask; I was certainly startled when the composer recommended liquor as an indispensable aid to writing a musical. Whatever one’s familiarity with Stephen Sondheim and his work, Six By Sondheim is a indispensable record that speeds by in a flash, and its presence on the dominant pay cable service puts other outlets like Ovation to shame. It would be naïve to expect a series of such programs from HBO, but Sondheim has many more memorable songs worth exploring; we can only hope that we may yet see more documentaries on his life and work as expert as this one, whatever the forum.

So gather around your viewing screen, set your DVR, or get ready to buy a couple of DVDs very shortly (definitely for Six By Sondheim; possibly for The Sound of Music). As for Kirstie, please stay away, so its travesty of theatre fails to make much of a mark anywhere. And, in the meantime, I hope you’ll join me in my daily prayer for season four of Slings and Arrows.

I have yet to see Pinter in the Pinter or Sondheim in the Sondheim. I have, however, seen Ayckbourn in the former and, incongruously, Pee Wee Herman in the latter. For anyone confused, I am referring to the recently renamed Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End and Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre. I applaud the naming of these venues, and I am equally enthusiastic about the Caryl Churchill Theatre that will open in Surrey next year. They are manifestations of a topic I find myself musing upon: using theatre naming as a means of promoting the awareness of theatrical history.

On the one hand, the name of every Broadway and West End theatre carries history, since the venue name will be associated perpetually with famous productions that played there. However, names are not exactly fixed in stone. While Broadway’s Belasco and New Amsterdam may stretch back to a century ago, the current Helen Hayes Theatre is the second building to honor “the first lady of the American Theatre”; the original (which had two names before Hayes) was torn down some 30 years ago. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre 50 years ago; today, that same theatre is the David T. Nederlander, named for a member of the family that now owns it.

The point is that theatre names are somewhat fluid, and the rationale behind their naming, past and present, can have a variety of motivations. It was certainly the style, once upon a time, for the impresario who built the theatre to name it after himself, but in New York, there has been an intermittently enlightened approach that has resulted in such venues as the Lunt- Fontanne Theatre (named for the husband and wife acting duo in 1958) and the August Wilson Theatre (renamed in 2005, just after the pioneering African American playwright passed away, the building’s sixth name). Among Broadway’s 40 theatres, two are named for legendary critics, the Brooks Atkinson and the Walter Kerr, and a third for newspaper caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, no small recognition for the fourth estate.

Other theatres are named for more practical reasons: when the not-forprofit Roundabout Theatre Company reclaimed a theatre on 42nd Street, part of the restoration and its ongoing funding was secured through a long term sponsorship that named the new venue the American Airlines Theater. Purists were dismayed, but to my mind, it was not affront, since it reestablished a working theatre where none had been for decades.

But I return to the Wilson, the Lunt-Fontanne, the Sondheim, the Hayes, because to me they are exemplars. Maybe, just maybe, patrons seeing shows in those theatres might take the time to find out about these storied names, both bygone and current. Perhaps programmes or websites can provide not just the history of the theatre, but of its namesake. Could our theatre capitals take the opportunity to make themselves billboards for theatre history with more judicious naming? In New York, what of a George Abbott, a Comden and Green, a Wendy Wasserstein Theatre? And they need not be posthumous. Harold Prince, one of the most influential figures in New York theatre from the 1950s to today, might be thusly honoured (even if he has had, at one time, not one but two theatres named for him in Philadelphia). In London, what of Ayckbourn, Stoppard, or Ralph Richardson?

This is not a decision that can be achieved through public opinion, since the authority rests with the owners of the buildings themselves. But perhaps while theatres retain the truly memorable, essential names, the more generic ones can become theatrical history markers. By way of example, both New York and London have Lyceums that might be better off personalized, if preservation regulations allow it. Since theatre is not a religious rite, why do London and New York both have St James Theatres if he was the patron saint of furriers and chemists?

Some theatres’ historic names have been proven outdated, the figures they were named for more fleeting than expected. Perhaps we must change these pieces of the theatre’s history in order to better promote theatre history and commemorate it for subsequent generations.