A Funny Thing Happened

One of life's best moments is when when you're laughing yourself silly, with only inane thoughts (or no thoughts at all) occupying your brain.

Unfortunately, these moments don't happen very often, not at this multi-media age when so many things are exploding all around you all at the same time. The brain is always busy editing, trying to figure out which need to be trashed and which need to be treasured.

I was blessed with one such moment (four hours to be exact) when all I did was snap, crackle, and pop. For once, I did not pause to ask myself, “What lesson is this teaching me?”

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the play by Stephen sondheim, was grace beyond tears of laughter. Written in an era before political correctness, this bawdy, naughty comedy—which had won many awards since it was produced on Broadway and re-staged in many places—makes no apologies for not having any intellectual weight.

Its sole purpose is to elicit the shallowest, but the best, of laughter.

I have JR to thank for this. He bought the tickets that took the two of us all the way up to the balcony where the stage looks like a peephole and the actors, like ants, “So if the play turns out to be blah, there won't be regrets.”

There were no regrets.

Before we entered the Insular Life Theater for the last staging of the musical comedy by Theater Down South, directed by Michael Williams, I vowed to refrain from wearing my severe stage savant hat. Yes, no expectations, no regrets.

What I was gifted with were marvelous moments of laughter, unadulterated guffaws that persisted all through the two-act play, and even one hour after that. I'd have gone on and on had it not been way past my bedtime.

Try seizing a moment when you do nothing but laugh out loud. It's actually more than marvelous. It's detoxifying.