A Funny Thing Happened...

One of my favorite musicals (and I LOVE musicals) is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  I first saw the movie when I was eleven years old and loved it.  In case you're unfamiliar with it, here is the opening song from the movie.


Keep in mind I didn't understand most of it.  I had no idea what a courtesan or a eunuch was and barely knew what virgin meant.  The movie starred Zero Mostel as Pseudolis, and I became a huge fan of his because of it.  I later found out that it was based on a Broadway musical which also starred Zero Mostel, which in turn was based on the plays of ancient Roman playwright Plautus.  From the first moment seeing the movie, I knew that I wanted to play the role of Pseudolis one day.  I did scenes from it in Drama Class, used the opening song, "Comedy Tonight," as an audition piece, bought the audio tape of the original cast album, and read the play so often I had much of it memorized.

I had hoped that they would do the show at my school when I was in High School.  Sadly, they didn't.  In fact, they did it two years after I graduated (in fact all the plays they did that year would have been perfect for me, as they also did Wizard of Oz and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night).  It felt like I would never get the chance to play the part.

Then, about 11 years after I first saw the movie, when I was going to San Joaquin Delta College, they were going to be doing the show.  I auditioned, gave one of the best callbacks I've ever given, and got the part of Pseudolis.  I was ecstatic from when I got the part, until the last performance.  I remember that people were amazed that I was off script by the second week of rehearsal.

"How did you memorize the lines so fast?" they asked.

"I've had the lines memorized for 11 years," I replied.  "I only had the script the first week so I could write the blocking down."

By the last week of performances, I had come down with a sore throat.  You couldn't tell from my performance though.  Here's a clip of me playing the part of Pseudolis in the opening number:

Sorry about the "Evaluation Copy" across the front of it.  I don't have a decent program to burn a DVD to my computer.

Someday I'd like to do the show again, maybe even direct it since I know the play backwards and forwards.  I definitely have some ideas on how I would do it.