Comedy Tonight

(from "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum")

Words & Music:

Stephen Sondheim

 

G            C  D   G            C  D

Something familiar, something peculiar

G             C           F        D7

Something for everyone: a comedy tonight

Something appealing, something appalling

Something for everyone: a comedy tonight

 

G       C    D      G       C    D

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns

G            B       F     G   Am   C   D7

Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns

G       C  D    G         C   D    G          Am G         Abm7

Old situations, new complications, nothing portentous or polite

Am7               G

Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!

 

Something convulsive, something repulsive

Something for everyone: a comedy tonight

Something aesthetic, something frenetic

Something for everyone: a comedy tonight

 

Nothing with gods, nothing with fate

Weighty affairs will just have to wait

Nothing that's formal, nothing that's normal, no recitations to recite

Open up the curtain, comedy tonight!

 

Something familiar, something peculiar

Something for everybody: comedy tonight

Something that's gaudy, something that's bawdy

Something for everybody: comedy tonight

 

Nothing that's grim, nothing that's Greek.  She plays Medea later this week.

Stunning surprises, cunning disguises.  Hundreds of actors out of sight.

 

Am7 [for entire section]

 

Pantaloons and tunics, courtesans and eunuchs

Funerals and chases, baritones and basses

Panderers, philanderers, cupidity, timidity

Mistakes, fakes, rhymes, crimes

Tumblers, grumblers, bumblers, fumblers

 

No royal curse, no Trojan horse

And a happy ending, of course

Goodness and badness, manifest madness – this time it all turns out all right

Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!

 

 




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