Xanthias (Kevin McHale) has a point, at face value, when he questions the premise of the show, provided by Dionysos (Dan Buckley): the time is the present and the place is ancient Greece. From what I can gather, this meant the show attempts to be topical, although I can’t say I can relate to taking a boat to Hades (don’t ask) in order to bring Shakespeare (Bart Lambert) back to Earth (is that even permissible for anyone other than Persephone?) because, apparently, blank verse can save humanity from whatever it is the show deems it to be in need of rescue from.
Okay, so the storyline is neither here nor there. Or is it? One of the musical numbers is called ‘Invocation & Instructions to the Audience’ and includes the lyric, “Please don’t fart”, which rather sets the tone for the evening. This isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. And yet, the show comes back to the plot repeatedly, still introducing characters well into the second half, and I was left unsure as to how invested I really needed to be in the narrative. Or was I meant to sit back and let proceedings wash over me? When the show’s programme says, “Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim”, however, one can never be too sure that light entertainment should override the unmasking of deep truths. Then again, there’s a moment when six members of the cast, supposedly dressed as frogs, sing, “Brek-kek-kek-kek! Brek-kek-kek-kek!” Is that sublime? Is that ridiculous? Is that ridiculously sublime?
This isn’t quite on the same level as the newest and last Sondheim musical, Here We Are, in terms of having very little music in the second half. But there were sometimes long gaps between the end of one musical number and the beginning of another, filled with so much spoken dialogue that this might as well have been a straight play. None of the songs were particularly memorable, and a long sequence involving a contest between Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw (Martha Pothen) wasn’t as sharp and riveting as it could have been. The show’s conclusion, too, was a damp squib – nothing actually gets resolved and the world is in exactly the same amount of turmoil at the end of the show as it was at the beginning.
There are, at least, some engaging performances to enjoy, with a modicum of metatheatre, which some comedy mined from Kevin McHale’s best-known role in American television, which I could still appreciate despite never having seen even one episode of Glee. Carl Patrick’s Charon was brilliant as the ferryman with a Tannoy – and far easier on the ears than those disembodied voices providing pre-recorded announcements on the London Underground.
But I couldn’t help but wonder if we might have been better off watching something closer to the original Aristophanes play, in the context of what ‘the present’ was when he wrote it, namely the Second Peloponnesian War. It is quite impossible to think of ‘the present’ meaning anything other than contemporary Western peacetime, especially when there’s a contactless payment and references to mobile phones.
The cast worked hard, but the show was a bit of a slog for me. Two and a half hours isn’t, in itself, problematic for a musical, but this one could do with a bit of trimming, perhaps even to restore it to whatever it was before it was revised and expanded. And for a show called The Frogs, shouldn’t the frogs in question have more to do and say?
Review by Chris Omaweng
Can art save civilisation? Let’s find out! Shaken by a divided and despairing political climate (sound familiar?), Dionysos and trusty sidekick Xanthias take a leap of faith straight into Hades. Their mission? Find a cure for an ailing world. But when they reach the river Styx, Dionysos encounters his worst nightmare… frogs.
Not your average pond dwellers, these amphibians are stubborn beings who resist change and are determined for the status quo to remain the same (sound familiar?). Will our dynamic duo outsmart these swampy naysayers and hop toward humanity’s salvation? Or will they get bogged down in their muddy resistance?
Dionysos – Dan Buckley
Xanthias – Kevin McHale
Herakles – Joaquin Pedro Valdes
Charon – Carl Patrick
Shakespeare – Bart Lambert
Shaw – Martha Pothen
Ariadne – Alison Driver
Ensemble – Milo McCarthy, Evonnee Bentley-Holder
Pluto – Victoria Stone (23 to 31 May), Danielle Steers (2 to 7 June), Sooz Kemper (9 to 14 June), Jo Foster (16 to 21 June)
A comedy written in 405 BC by Aristophanes
Freely adapted by Burt Shevelove
Even more freely adapted by Nathan Lane
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Director – Georgie Rankcom
Musical Supervisor – Ben McQuigg
Musical Director – Yshani Perinpanayagam
Choreographer – Matt Nicholson
Set and Costume Designer – Libby Todd
Lighting Designer – Samuel Biondolillo
Sound Designer – Joshua Robins
Samsational Entertainment, The Grey Area, Benson Drive Productions, Melissa & Bradford Coolidge, Thomas Hopkins Productions, Nelson & Tao and Eric Kuhn for Folk Productions present
THE FROGS
Southwark Playhouse Borough
23 May to 28 June 2025
