Weighty Affairs Will Just Have to Wait

Robert Anthony Jones as Pseudolus, Joshua Phan-Gruber as Miles Gloriosus. News-Progress photos by Keith Stewart

Lycus: I’ll kill him!

Crassus: Who?

Lycus: The lyingest, cheatingest, sloppiest slave in all Rome!

Crassus: Oh, Pseudolus.

By Dan Hagen

Traps, disguises, schemes, chase scenes, improbable adventures, narrow escapes.

Composer Stephen Sondheim once noted that the elements of melodrama are virtually identical to those of farce, the difference being one of attitude. But this sure ain’t “Les Miserables,” gang.

In his 1962 hit “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” Sondheim definitely created a farce, a bouncing bundle of Broadway broad comedy as eternal as Rome — 200 B.C. apparently doesn’t date.

The director, choreographer AND costume designer for the Little Theatre’s second show of the season is Edward Carignan. Turns out there can be an advantage to doing all three jobs at once. The production becomes someone’s singular vision, and all the moving parts spin together.

The tone is set by the set, from the very moment you see scenic designer Noel

Rennerfeldt’s bright cartoony Roman street and hear Kevin Long lead his orchestra in the first notes of one of the best opening numbers in Broadway history, “Comedy Tonight.”

You have to hear every word of Sondheim’s lyrics to get the full effect, and the cast here enunciates them well — “Free,” “Pretty Little Picture,” “Impossible,” “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” the toe-tappers roll on, all enlivened by smartly conceived little bits of business.

Any false notes? Well, the second act chase in and out of doors goes on a bit long. Every farce seems to need one, but we always quickly get the idea.

So send in the clowns. We have Tommy Bullington as the dryly henpecked Senex and Lee Ann Payne as his battleaxe wife Domina (the characters’ names describe their comedic function).

“Forgive me for ever having mistrusted you, my darling,” Domina tells Senex at one point. “But you HAVE been a little distant these past 29 years.”

Their son is the traditional romantic hero named, of course, Hero. Peter Marinaro plays him with the right mixture of dewy-eyed wonder and dim-bulb desire for the prostitute next door.

“Is that bad?” Hero asks his personal slave, Pseudolus. “There’s no way to make it sound like an achievement,” Pseudolus replies.

What the boy wants is the girl, and that’s what the scheming slave will get him if he’ll be a slave no more.

“People do not go around freeing slaves every day,” Hero explains.

“Be the first. Start a fashion,” Pseudolous says.

Next door is Karl Skylar Urban as Marcus Lycus, a gentleman and a procurer. Everybody wants what he’s got, and Urban gets some great Larry Gelbart lines. “If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times; do not fan the girls when they're wet! But you’ll never learn, you'll be a eunuch all your life.”

Also next door is deadpan Jack Milo as Erronious, a man who long ago lost his small children to pirates (think they’ll turn up?).

Joshua Phan-Gruber is Miles Gloriosus, a grand and Randian egotist of a Roman general. His self-love complete, his pomposity perfect, Phan-Gruber is therefore all the funnier when he breaks into a little tunic-tugging dance or some other bit.

A favorite is Colin Shea Denniston as Hysterium, the battleaxe’s groveling “slave of slaves.” In a part that’s easy to overdo, Denniston has the admirable quality of being utterly ridiculous without seeming to be aware of that fact. He’s funny and fascinating to watch.

The greatest surprise in this production was Philia, the virginal, charmingly stupid courtesan played by Sarah Ledtke. This can be a ho-hum part in the hands of lesser actresses, but Ledtke is hilarious, slyly subtle where the other actors are required to play broad. It takes someone smart to effectively play Miss Utah-level dumb. She is a shining beacon of dimness.

Presiding over the proceedings is Robert Anthony Jones as the smarter-than-everybody slave Pseudolous, and I can’t imagine a more exhausting or rewarding role. The character is on stage almost all the time, singing, dancing, mugging, preening, screaming, scheming. When played perfectly (as Jones plays him here), he’s as irresistible a tornado as Zero Mostel, as cutely animated as Bugs Bunny.

Jones is in good company. Wiki notes that every actor who has opened in the role of Pseudolus on Broadway (Mostel, Phil Silvers and Nathan Lane) won a Best Actor Tony Award, and that Jason Alexander, who performed as Pseudolus in “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” also won a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.

Sondheim is my favorite Broadway composer, this is one of my top-10 musicals, and I have to say I have never seen a funnier version  — including the 1966 movie, which was weirdly denuded of most of its songs and could not profit from the deliberate staginess of the material.

So save the tragedy for tomorrow. Why not laugh tonight?

Incidental intelligence: “Forum” has music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Gelbart, who created TV’s M*A*S*H. It’s inspired by the farces of the ancient playwright Plautus.

The cast includes Kelsey Andres, Rachel Perin, Melissa Jones, Amanda Johns, Kara Guy, Ashley Klinger, Josh Houghton, Matthew Glover and Andy Frank. The show has lighting design by Greg Solomon and stage management by Jeremy J. Phillips.

Performances will run through June 30. Tickets may be purchased by calling The Little Theatre on the Square Box Office at (217)-728-7375 or online at www .thelittletheatre.org.

 Peter Marinaro as Hero, Jones as Pseudolus and Sarah Ledtke as Philia in Stephen Sondheim's "Forum"