Last year it was a powerful performance of the dramatic musical Les Miserables, but it’s a comedy tonight at Carlsbad High School as they put on a terrific rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Filled with some of the best lines in musical comedy history, Forum takes us back through history to a street in ancient Rome. The set is comprised of three stately houses of colorful marble and regal pillars. One house is home to a determined old man named Erronius (David Martinez) who goes out every day in search of his long-lost son and daughter who have been missing since they were babes. In another house lives a successful “merchant of love” named Marcus Lycus (Mikael Thomas) who employs a huge number of live-in courtesans (much to the chagrin of nearby wives and the temptation of nearby husbands). In the middle house resides one nagging and dominating wife named Domina (Carolyn McMahon), her henpecked husband Senex (Tyler Leslie), and their son Hero (Kevin Klauber) who has a crush on a courtesan next door – the newly arrived virgin Philia (Allison Easterbrooks) who has but one talent (being lovely) but who is promised to the strong, wealthy, if not exceptionally bright warrior Miles Gloriosus (Collin McConnell). That’s going to make it difficult for Hero to get the girl, but don’t give up hope yet. We are assured at the very beginning that, this being a comedy, we are guaranteed a happy ending. Offering that guarantee and narrating the show is Pseudolus (Ryan Johnson), Hero’s clever slave who gets his master to promise him his freedom if he can help Hero win Philia. Let the comedy begin!

And so it does with a cast that includes several great comedians led by the charismatic Ryan Johnson. He is joined by Tyler Leslie, John Cardenas, and Mikael Thomas for the hilarious Everybody Ought to Have a Maid number, and shares a hysterical duet with John Cardenas in a Lovely Reprise when he convinces an initially reluctant Hysterium to pretend to be Philia’s corpse. As the real Philia, Allison Easterbrooks is charmingly naïve in That’ll Show Him as she describes to Hero how she’ll trick the warrior Miles Gloriosus by often giving her body to him whilst she is really thinking of Hero. Kevin Klauber as Hero, Allison Easterbrooks, and Ryan Johnson team up for an amusing Pretty Little Picture.

Pseudolus: