The Frogs at Southwark Playhouse Borough – review

Stephen Sondheim described the first production of The Frogs, his musical based on Aristophanes’s Greek comedy, as “one of the few deeply unpleasant professional experiences I’ve had”.

The show opened in and around a swimming pool at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1974, where the acoustics and the water meant that no one could hear and everyone got wet. It had been freely adapted by Burt Shevelove from the 405 BCE original and was then even more freely adapted by Nathan Lane (with additional dialogue) for a Broadway revival in 2004 – for which Sondheim wrote more songs. His verdict on that was also pretty damning. “It suffered from inflation,” he wrote in Finishing the Hat. “In Burt and Aristophanes’s hands, it had been an hour and a half long; it should have stayed that way.”

Given that performance history, it’s to the credit of the Grey Area company that they’ve jumped into the deep end and attempted a revival at all. There’s a lot to enjoy in their energetically silly production, which has the attraction of the wryly dour Kevin McHale from Glee as the slave Xanthias, and a few more lines added to accommodate his appearance. “It’s not technically West End,” he says, looking around the cramped Southwark Playhouse. “It’s cute.”

The show is full of good things and some terrifically clever songs, beginning with “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience” which contains the immortal line “So please don’t fart/There’s very little air and this is art”, a request that arguably should be on the door of every theatre. Yet it is undoubtedly overlong and overinsistent.

The tale revolves around the decision of the god of drama (and wine) Dionysos (a sprightly Dan Buckley) to visit Hades because the world is in a terrible, divided state and he wants to bring an artist back to life to inspire humanity to heal itself. His pick is George Bernard Shaw, who – when he finds him – turns out to be a blathering windbag (brilliantly incarnated by Martha Pothen in a cotton wool beard). Ultimately, in a surprisingly moving scene including Sondheim’s setting of “Fear no more the heat of the sun” from Cymbeline, he choses Shakespeare (Bart Lambert) instead.

En route to this final debate, there are multiple oddball encounters: with the hero Heracles (preening Joaquin Pedro Valdes), a grumpy Charon (Carl Patrick, excelling in many parts) and finally a glamorous Pluto, played in the course of this run by five guest stars. Press night brought Victoria Scone of Drag Race fame, and their throaty, seductive aplomb adds glamour to the night.

McHale and Buckley are an enjoyable double act, and director Georgie Rankcom and designer Libby Todd bring considerable inventiveness and frivolity to the staging. The frog chorus in particular looks spectacular, in green body suits with sparkling green gloved hands and pink ping pong ball fingers. The choreography of Matt Nicholson is smartly creative, drilling the dancers perfectly in the tiny space.

The music direction of Yshani Perinpanayagam keeps things lively thanks to a small but effective band, though perhaps the lyrics get too lost in the general enthusiasm. If you are watching a rarely-staged Sondheim, you also want to know what he has to say.