In 1938, The Boys From Syracuse opened with an announcement. The two huge masks of Tragedy and Comedy enter loftily. From underneath, two gleeful comics emerge: “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us!” They exit tapping and the show begins.

That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. When they put Rodgers and Hart on the cover of Time that year, the headline read: “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us!” It was on the show’s posters.

In 2002, The Boys From Syracuse are back, exhaustively overhauled from head to toe. And, just to let you know this isn’t your father’s Syracuse, the rewrites start from the word go. This time round, two chorines clad in Caesar’s Palace tunics enter and slough off the revised announcement: “If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for you.&r ...

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