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Goodspeed’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Hammy hearts in the right place.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Ends Nov. 29, Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam; $27.50-$69.50; 860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.

When the rushing, rousing Roman slavery shenanigans of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum had its pre-Broadway try-out at New Haven's Shubert Theater in 1962, the show didn't yet have its vaunted opening number "Comedy Tonight" in which the starring Roman slave Pseudolus promises to put off tragedy until tomorrow.

The current revival at the Goodspeed Opera House demonstrates how much those changes still mean to this creative cobbling together of farce routines spanning the centuries from the rise and fall of Rome to the bump and grind of burlesque.

Strangely, though, Goodspeed's version also omits a song from the original version which in some ways defines this production: "Pretty Little Picture." This is not the first production of Forum to lose the song. But when seen in the same month as Long Wharf Theatre's perversely overdone, too-slick-to-click rendition of The Fantasticks, it's nice to see an old-fashioned, human-scaled musical that avoids the need for high-tech effects. Not as boisterous as it could or should be, there is still a lot to be said for a show that connects on a frenetic yet familiar emotional level — a series of neat set-ups and pretty little pictures.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is not impervious to mistreatment: Richard Lester's 1966 film version gutted the music while bloating the dialogue and placing the farce amid a too-gritty naturalistic environment. The show's ignoble low-brow heritage should not be ignored, and indeed Goodspeed embraces these ancient low-rent charms.

It ordinarily takes a larger-than-life clown to master the slobbering slave character Pseudolus. Adam Heller — whose Connecticut credits include the pre-Broadway version of Falsettos at Hartford Stage, Art at TheaterWorks and one previous Goodspeed stint, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — is an affable, ever-grinning Pseudolus, more host than provocateur. Still he finds a way to weave himself wittily through the comically complex plot, a clever mash-up of three plays by the Roman playwright Plautus.

Most of Heller's castmates are similarly bound by the script — they succumb to stereotypes that more adventurous performers would use as launching pads. When the rapid-fire, whatever-sticks gags (most of which involve shouting, pointing or pratfalling) fail, the players seem at sea without a back-up plan, as if dropping one's pants were rocket science. As the dumpy henpecked master Senex, David Wohl, for instance, takes his laconic deadpan manner too far, until he's practically in a Beckett play.

Director/choreographer Ted Pappas, who has previous experience blending material from disparate sources and centuries at Goodspeed, with Kiss Me, Kate (and also has Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd on his résumé) seems more attuned to Sondheim's precious lyrics than to the smell of the greasepaint.

Like the American burlesque stylings it comes to praise, not bury, this show should be as malleable as a rubber-faced comic's antic muggings, an unpredictable roly-poly feast. The Goodspeed knows this — the bunches of grapes which make up the bra and panties outfit of one of the sexy denizens of the House of Lycus prove that.

While the cast doesn't get every nonsensical nuance right, their hammy hearts are in the right place, right under their loud mouths and heaving bosoms.