can be seen as a Valentine to the trouser-dropping school of comedy; a style that was vastly popular in silent films, vaudeville and burlesque (which, of course, was the subject of Sondheim's previous show, Gypsy ) but was breathing its last when the creators of Forum were kids. Unlike those of our more sensitive era, comedians then were often thought funny in proportion to their poundage, and the notion of a fat slave (as Zero Mostel was) was inherently comic. Barrit now looks, let's say, a good eater, but he used to be quite fat. "No, you needn't qualify it. I was fat. You could have got all the girl dancers in this show into me and still have had room for a few more." Fatter is funnier, he agrees. "When you're fat, you can get away with more. People are more forgiving, and they find you more lovable. Even when fat people say nasty things, like Robert Morley playing Sheridan Whiteside, people think, 'Isn't he cuddly?'" There are comics, he acknowledges, who use their bulk in an aggressive way, but in this show Pseudolus never has the chance. "I get manhandled quite a lot," Barrit says, so he is able to do the big-but-helpless sort of comedy as well. Hall thinks the mainspring of the comedy is the characters' desperation: "Everybody has something to hide, and something to lose. The more they have to lose, the funnier it gets." (Top of the list is Hysterium, perpetually in a state