The Chung Ying Theatre Company has adapted Cyrano de Bergerac into Cantonese and portrayed Mulan as a school table-tennis player. Now the 30-year-old company reckons recession-hit Hong Kong is ready for show-tune titters in togas in its adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical farce, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
The production might be a retro choice but it is a proven audience puller. Based on Roman playwright Plautus' story and a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, A Funny Thing premiered on Broadway in 1962 and highlights the efforts of a wily slave, Pseudolus, to win his freedom by pairing his master Hero with Philia the courtesan next door.
The Tony-winning stage production was adapted four years later into an Oscar-winning (for best music) film starring veteran comedians Buster Keaton, Phil Silvers and Frankie Howerd.
The show's gags might be old, but they have been translated into Cantonese and its toe-tapping song-and-dance numbers are just the feel-good entertainment Hong Kong folk need in hard times, says Gary Tam Wai-kuen, who plays the male lead, Pseudolus.
'I think it's necessary to stage this cheerful and funny show at this moment, when the economy isn't going strong and people are feeling a bit gloomy,' says the graduate of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (APA).
'The serious tragedies might be hard for the audience to digest. They can use some light-hearted, genuine laughter.'
