Everyone ought to have a favorite Broadway musical. Personally my favorite for 10 years has been "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."…

Plautus was a disgusting old Roman playwright who specialized in writing dirty plays with an expertise that did his morals no possible credit….

What the authors of "A Funny Thing" have done is to take a sampling of Plautus's kind of humor and link it with our contemporary sense of fun. The results are not merely hilarious, they are also immeasurably endearing.

Here in "A Funny Thing" the authors have caught so many of the classic comedy situations and yet given them a new freshness by making the prototype characters into song and dance men from American vaudeville. The blending works like a love potion.

Clive Barnes, "Stage: 'Funny Thing' Happens Again," in The New York Times (© 1972 by The New York Times Company...