A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
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40 free A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is the musical that proves a two-thousand-year-old joke can still land. A slave named Pseudolus lies, bluffs and improvises through one frantic day on a Roman street, all to help his young master Hero win Philia, the girl he has only admired from afar. This quiz covers the plot and its tangle of disguises, the characters and what their Latin and Greek names mean, the songs, the troubled road to Broadway, the revivals, and the 1966 film with its cast of veteran clowns. It is pitched for theatre fans, cast members learning the show, and anyone who has just watched the film. Most questions can be reasoned out, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which silent-film legend plays old Erronius in the 1966 film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton was 70 and terminally ill, yet he took the pratfall after running into a tree himself. The film reached cinemas eight months after his death.
Q 02A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was whose first Broadway show as both composer and lyricist?
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim had written only the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy before it. The show went on to run for 964 performances on Broadway.
Q 03The title A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum spoofs a stock opening line used by whom?
Vaudeville comics
Vaudeville comics often began a story by saying a funny thing had happened on the way to the theater. The authors simply swapped in the Roman marketplace.
Q 04Which actor, later Broadway's first Tevye, created Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Zero Mostel
Zero Mostel won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical as the scheming slave, then repeated the part in the 1966 film. He had spent much of the 1950s on the Hollywood blacklist.
Q 05In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, what does Hero promise Pseudolus for winning him Philia?
His freedom
His freedom is the engine of the whole plot: every lie Pseudolus tells is meant to get him out of slavery. He ends the show a freedman with the courtesan Gymnasia on his arm.
Q 06In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the slave Hysterium is talked into dressing up as what?
A dead bride
A dead bride is what the captain is shown: Hysterium lies veiled as Philia, supposedly struck down by plague. The ruse soon collapses into a chase with three veiled Philias on the run.
Q 07Which woman took over as Pseudolus in the 1990s Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg stepped into a part written for a man when the revival's first star moved on in early 1997. David Alan Grier took over from her that summer.
Q 08Which future Phantom of the Opera star plays Hero in the film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Michael Crawford
Michael Crawford made three films in three years for the same director, this one between The Knack and How I Won the War. He created the Phantom on stage two decades later.
Q 09The plot of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is borrowed from the farces of which Roman playwright?
Plautus
Plautus wrote around 200 BC, so the mistaken identities and slamming doors are more than two thousand years old. Pseudolus is even named after one of his plays.
Q 10Which opening number was written during tryouts to rescue A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Comedy Tonight
Comedy Tonight replaced an opener that undersold the show. Once the new number promised a bawdy, wild farce, a production that had been dying on the road became a hit.
Q 11Which bespectacled TV comic turned down A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, then led its 1972 revival?
Phil Silvers
Phil Silvers reportedly feared going on without his glasses and falling into the orchestra pit. He wore them when he finally played the slave a decade later, and won a Tony.
Q 12Which Beatles film director made the 1966 screen version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Richard Lester
Richard Lester brought the quick cutting of A Hard Day's Night and Help! to ancient Rome. Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles had also been considered for the job.
Q 13Who won a 1996 Tony Award as Pseudolus in Broadway's revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Nathan Lane
Q 21Which Philia and Hero duet in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum do two slaves later reprise?
Lovely
Lovely is sung straight by the young couple, then turned into a joke when Pseudolus croons it to a fellow slave. It is one of the handful of songs kept for the 1966 film.
Q 22In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, who stole the infant children of old Erronius years ago?
Pirates
Pirates carried off both babies, and Erronius has spent twenty years abroad looking for them. He comes home having given up, only to find them both on his own street.
Q 23Which West Side Story director was called in to fix A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum before Broadway?
Jerome Robbins
Nathan Lane kept a streak alive: every actor to open as the slave on Broadway has won the Tony for Best Leading Actor. He had voiced Timon in The Lion King two years earlier.
Q 14In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the courtesan Philia has a Greek name meaning what?
Love
Love is what philia means in Greek, the root of words like philosophy. The name also sounds like the Latin word filia, a sly clue to how the story ends.
Q 15Matching rings prove that Philia and Miles Gloriosus, in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, are what?
Brother and sister
Brother and sister is the verdict once old Erronius spots the rings, which cancels the captain's claim on her. It also makes Philia freeborn, so she can marry Hero.
Q 16In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pseudolus claims Philia caught a plague from which island?
Crete
Crete is blamed for a plague said to leave its victims smiling to the end, which explains away Philia's cheerfulness. The lie fails because the captain has just come from there.
Q 17Senex, the henpecked father in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, has a Latin name meaning what?
Old man
Old man is the plain meaning of senex, the root of words such as senior and senate. The lustful version of the type, chasing a much younger woman, was a staple of Roman farce.
Q 18Which co-author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum later developed M*A*S*H for television?
Larry Gelbart
Larry Gelbart wrote the book with Burt Shevelove and shared a Tony for it. A decade later he wrote the pilot of the Korean War sitcom and stayed for its first four seasons.
Q 19In which country was the 1966 film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum shot?
Spain
Spain stood in for ancient Rome: the cast and crew worked at a studio in Madrid and on location around the city in the autumn of 1965.
Q 20The 1963 Tony voters snubbed which part of the Best Musical winner A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
The score
The score went unnominated even as the show took Best Musical and prizes for its book, director, producer and star. Its composer was setting his own lyrics on Broadway for the first time.
Jerome Robbins had turned the show down once, then came back uncredited during its troubled tryouts. His biggest change was a new opening that told audiences to expect a wild farce.
Q 24Which British comic led London's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and then a Roman TV sitcom?
Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd played Pseudolus in the West End in 1963 and again in 1986. The BBC's Up Pompeii! was inspired by that stage hit, casting him as the slave Lurcio.
Q 25Which Seinfeld star won a Tony after playing Pseudolus from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Jason Alexander
Jason Alexander narrated a 1989 anthology of one choreographer's greatest numbers and played the slave in a single scene. He was named Best Actor in a Musical the year his sitcom began.
Q 26Which insects swarm through the animated end credits of the film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Flies
Flies were an in-joke from Richard Williams, later the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Produce left to rot on the set overnight had plagued the shoot with them.
Q 27Which future Doctor Who star has a cameo in the 1966 film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Jon Pertwee
Jon Pertwee appears briefly as Crassus in a screenplay co-written by another Pertwee, Michael. On the London stage three years earlier he had played the flesh-peddler Marcus Lycus.
Q 28Miles Gloriosus of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum takes his name from the Latin for what?
Boastful soldier
Boastful soldier is the literal sense, and the type is older than Rome: the Roman play that made the phrase famous was itself adapted from a lost Greek one called The Braggart.
Q 29In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which ingredient does Pseudolus lack for a sleeping potion?
Mare's sweat
Mare's sweat is the one thing missing from the recipe in a stolen book of potions. Pseudolus later flicks some on Senex to persuade him that he badly needs a bath.
Q 30Which veteran director, then in his seventies, staged the original A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
George Abbott
George Abbott was 74 when the show opened and won the Tony for directing it. He went on working for decades and lived to 107.