This is a chance to catch up with a frolicsome Sondheim rarity with a long history. Heralded by trumpets and the bouncing rhythm of its opening "Fanfare", it is a tongue-in-cheek celebration that reaches out to the audience.
Aristophanes wrote The Frogs in 405 BC when it won the prize for best comedy at the Lenaia festival in honour of Dionysos, god of wine and of theatre. Athens was in the middle of the Peloponnesian War and not doing well, the world in a bit of a mess. His play sends Dionysus and his slave Xanthias down to Hades to bring back recently dead playwright Euripides in the hope that his art will be able to change things.
In 1941, Bert Shevelove staged his very free adaptation in the Yale University swimming pool—appropriately because at sports events Yale supporters would croak out the "Brekekekèx-koàx-koáx" chant that Aristophanes gave to his frog chorus. In 1974, he did it again, this time with Sondheim songs (and with Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver in the chorus), then in 2004, even more freely adapted by Nathan Lane and more songs from Sondheim, it reached Broadway and got its UK première at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2017. Now, with a little more tweaking under Georgie Rankcom’s direction, it gets a vigorous and joyful revival.
Modern audiences aren’t too clued up on the subjects of Aristophanes’ satire, topical 2030 years ago, or the stylistic differences in the verse of ancient Greek dramatists, so where the original features a contest between Euripides and Aeschylus, Shevelove gives us Shaw and Shakespeare, but, though Dionysus' call for change may match today’s world, with the frogs whom Dionysos so fears against it, political satire isn’t this show’s strong point, though it has lots of laughs.
Dan Buckley and Kevin McHale (well known from Glee but making his UK debut in what is only his second live theatre role) open the show as actors, dedicating the piece to god Dionysos and giving instructions on audience behaviour—including the request “Please don’t fart/There’s very little air and this is art.” If that doesn’t make you smile, this isn’t the show for you.
Becoming Dionysos and his slave Xanthias, Buckley and McHale make a delightful double-act, full of personality and good vocalists too.
Getting alive into Hades and coming out still living is not easy, so Dionysos seeks help from half-brother Herakles (who has done it). Joaquin Pedro Valdes’s muscular hero tries to turn him into a butch simulacrum. Singing the advice "Dress Big",he flexes his biceps to give Dionysos a vigorous workout, but it would take more than a few push-ups and the loan of an outfit to achieve that. Nevertheless, it is posing as Herakles that Dionysus gets across the Styx ferried by Carl Patrick’s whistle-blowing Charon, who (literally) pops up. That is when drama god turns drama queen as he has to face his great fear: those titular Frogs.
Frog footprints have led us into the theatre and later will seem to be everywhere, but this how we actually meet them in a frenzied song and dance number that is hilarious, though creating a chaos in which what I suspect are clever lyrics are largely lost. Matt Nicholson’s choreography is wild and Libby Todd’s costumes zany with straw skirts, gaping-mouth masks and red-suckered toes.
After the interval, things certainly slow down, Carl Patrick gets another comic turn as gatekeeper Aeakos, wanting vengeance on Herakles for killing three-headed dog Cerberus, but they are let in where Dionysos is briefly united with his beloved but deceased Ariadne (Alison Driver) and welcomed by diva-like Pluto, played with extravagant gesture by Victoria Scone from Drag Race (the first of five guest stars who will succeed each other through the run) before he tracks down Bernard Shaw (Martha Pothen) and finds himself judging between the output of Shaw and of Shakespeare (Bart Lambert).
That confrontation isn’t as zany as most of the show; indeed, it is quite serious as the dramatists come up with quotes from their work to match given themes. On the subject of death, it produces a sensitive reading from St Joan by Shaw and a Sondheim setting of the dirge from Cymbeline for Shakespeare to sing.
This isn’t top-notch Sondheim (I don’t think it was Aristophanes' best either), but there are lots of good things in it, and a spirited cast delivers it with seductive energy.