Love, I Hear! Couple Jessica Stone and Christopher Fitzgerald Create an All-Male Forum

It's the quintessential musical comedy: Stephen Sondheim, Burt Shevelove, and Larry Gelbart's 1962 tuner A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Inspired by the ancient Roman farces of Plautus, the work follows a slave named Pseudolus who attempts to win his freedom by helping his young master woo a beautiful woman. With songs like "Comedy Tonight," and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," Forum is one of the classics of the genre.

Like many of Sondheim's musicals in recent memory, Forum is about to be reexamined in a major way. An all-male production, spearheaded by director Jessica Stone, is currently taking shape at Two River Theater in New Jersey. Originally produced at Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2010, Stone's vision harkens back to the style of how the source material was originally presented in the 200s B.C.: "There weren't any female actors in ancient Rome," she says.

As her Pseudolus, a role previously inhabited by the likes of Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane, Stone turned to an actor with whom she is extremely familiar: her husband, two-time Tony nominee Christopher Fitzgerald. At a recent rehearsal, the pair sat down to discuss their collaboration and the way they create a work/home balance.

Jessica, how did you come up with your concept for this production?
Jessica Stone: Nicky Martin, who was running Williamstown Theatre Festival, had wanted to do Forum and said, "I want you to be in it." I was a little disappointed in the idea. I don't know who I would play. I love the score and it's a really funny book, but that's just not compelling to me, to play any of those parts. The stereotypes of the dumb hottie and the shrewish wife and the speechless courtesan have been passed down from Plautus, who was a man writing for men who were playing women. There weren't any female actors in ancient Rome.

I said to Nicky, "You should just do it all-male, but have them play it for real. And you should double-cast it, so you can celebrate the virtuosity of our American actors." Have the guy playing Senex play Vibrata, a courtesan, and see what it does to the comedy and gender identity. It would be an interesting sociological experiment. Even in the 1960s when it was written, it was written by men for, basically, all men, in a time when women weren't so vocal about shaking up stereotypes. All the female characters [in "Forum"] are male constructs. And he said, "All right, you do it." I could understand how, initially, a woman might say, "Come on, sister. You're taking work away from women." Anecdotally, my girlfriends in the arts are all like "Oh, I'm happy to sit this one out." And I'm not taking Steel Magnolias and making it all-male.

Was there ever a question that Chris would be your Pseudolous?
Christopher Fitzgerald: Not a question. I put the marriage on the line. [laughs]

Jessica: Initially, it was supposed to be a different actor. Chris was supposed to be Hysterium. And then we lost that actor, and Nicky took one of the board members from Williamstown to Finian's Rainbow. [That person] watched the show and said, "I'll give you money for this if he's Pseudolous." And a star was born. [laughs] Honestly, I've never looked back. And I'm not saying that because he's my husband. There's something really fun about taking that stereotype and turning it inside out. He's not this kind of lascivious old guy chasing girls and looking for freedom, but he's a scrappy slave who is maybe not the same age as Hero, but they're peers.

Chris, you're stepping into the shoes of the likes of Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane. What's that like? Were you familiar with the show?
Christopher: I use them as inspiration. They're two of my heroes, for sure. I love working on it because it's so well-crafted, and yet, there's so much freedom to play. It's this amazing roadmap that requires vaudeville, sincerity, and all of what makes me happy as an actor. I wasn't that familiar with the show. I knew some of the numbers, but it wasn't something I really thought about until I read it. It was like a religious experience. It really is one of the most brilliantly crafted pieces of writing for musicals that exists.

Jessica: It's definitely one of the best-crafted books, I think, in the American musical theater canon…But there's no fat in the book. It's like a Swiss watch, impeccably crafted. It feels like a lot of joy went into it.

Did Sondheim see this production at Williamstown?
Chris: Hated it! [laughs]

Jessica: He was really wonderful about it. We did another reading of it and Roundabout, and he came again.

Chris: I do this silly little bit of shtick with Miles Gloriosus, where I basically groom him. [Sondheim] was saying how he wished Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart could have seen it. That kind of tickled him. He was really supportive. He's been seeing a lot of interesting things happening to his shows.

Jessica: We shouldn't be so precious about these stories. It's fun to turn it inside out and shake it up. I'm not making the argument that now, in 2015, this is the only way Forum should be done. If there's a version of it where we still have half-naked women and old men singing "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," there's a place for that. But I think it's worth exploring through a different lens. It's such a great show that it can bear it.

How do you separate your work-life from your home-life?
Chris: We don't even have to work too hard at doing that.

Jessica: We have two kids. If we talk shop, they can smell it. We talked more about it before we started rehearsals than now. Now, we can feel the "we've been rehearsing that for seven hours today," and we go home and both of us need to regroup.

Chris: Eat and watch The Walking Dead.

Jessica: Hang with the boys and then watch zombies.