SOURCE: “Ignoble Romans” in New York, April 29, 1996, pp. 56–57.

In the following review of a revival of Something Happened on the Way to the Forum, Simon offers a negative assessment of individual performances, choreography, and the direction in contrast to the original production.

Some gloomy things happened on the way to the revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. One of our wittiest, sexiest, smartest, and most songful musicals has undergone a sea change from high to ebb tide. Some of the old felicities are still there, but an essential string is untuned, some crucial tesserae are missing from the mosaic of merrymaking—Thalia, the comic muse, has averted her face from the proceedings.

The original 1962 staging by George Abbott and the choreographer Jack Cole had a marvelously bawdy, lustily heterosexual character, with male and female flesh palpably yearning for each other and the...