A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum

In 1962 the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was employed to write words and music for the Roman romp now revived at the National Theatre.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

JULIE MYERSON:
It's very funny. It's a completely enjoyable evening in the theatre. It's slick. I didn't know it at all. It reminded me of how brilliant Sondheim's lyrics are. His rhymes are both obvious and not obvious and they add to the action as well. If I had a slight criticism, I felt the second half was just more of the same, whereas I wanted to feel, although it did resolve things, I didn't care what was being resolved, I felt we were going back for another dollop. Apart from that, it was fantastic.

MARK LAWSON:
He uses words you never expect to hear in a show song like repulsive, compulsive.

IAN MCMILLAN:
The last couple of years I've been writing musicals and he makes me want to stop. I've been sitting there trying to rhyme things, and then you see something like this. And what else is wonderful about it is he is not fully formed. He hasn't written the wonderful things he's written yet. And yet, what I loved about it is it would be funny and then suddenly the songs would come on and there would be darkness. Even the opening song, there's a bit of darkness in that. When you think you're going along at a steady pace and Sondheim says, wait a minute, it's not that funny. That's his genius.

JAMES BROWN:
I enjoyed it. The women looked fantastic. When Sam Kelly came out, he just moved the whole thing on to a different level. It was a tremendous character. It made me wonder why there was no whole sitcom around him.

IAN MCMILLAN:
It was like an acting lesson from him. As soon as he came on he lit up the stage, and his gestures, his movement, the things he was pretending to get wrong. When he wasn't on the stage you wanted him to come back.

MARK LAWSON:
I felt it was fantastically exuberant, the comedy was fantastic. I felt compared to other casts I have heard they didn't have the singing.

JULIE MYERSON:
I felt they got away with it. I thought the dancing was brilliant. The other thing I really loved was I was very surprised to find myself laughing so loudly as something that was quite old fashioned. I thought it was very Frankie Howerd-ish.

MARK LAWSON:
There were a couple of samples from Frankie Howerd, a couple of eyebrow moments he took from him. It's always said that musicals are rewritten rather than written. There are nine whole songs that they cut out over time. And the script took five years.

IAN MCMILLAN:
That's the amazing thing, I only spend half an hour on mine, maybe that's where I'm going wrong! They work and work and work at these lyrics that appear effortless. Again, that's his genius.

JAMES BROWN:
Top entertainment, I thought.