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November 5, 2023 3:59 pm

The Frogs: They’re Back and Bouncier Than Ever

By Sandy MacDonald

★★★★☆ Nathan Lane hosted an evanescent revival of his too rarely seen collaboration with Stephen Sondheim.

Marc Kudisch, Kevin Chamberlin, and Douglas Sills in The Frogs. Photo: Erin Baiano

What a bacchanalian feast MasterVoices mastermind Ted Sperling set out for our delectation: a semi-staged concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s 1974 musical folly The Frogs, unseen since 2004, when Nathan Lane – recruited here as host/narrator – amended Burt Shevelove’s adaptation, elicited seven new songs, and launched an all too-brief run at Lincoln Center.

Even then, the work came with a storied past: that original staging in Yale’s overly resonant swimming pool, with Meryl Streep and Christopher Durang among the ribbiters.

It’s a mystery why this playful pastiche has sat on the shelf for so long. The script was truncated for this brief run (only three performances, all pre-sold out), but Sperling laid on some extra sauce: 200-odd choristers hovering over the Rose Theatre stage in towering tiers, a cadre of lithe dancers carrying out Lainie Sakakura’s alternately antic/erotic choreography for amphibians and Dionysians respectively, and Sperling himself leading the orchestra.

He deserves kudos for the dream-team casting as well: Douglas Sills as demi-god Dionysus, determined to troll Hades in search of a playwright who, resuscitated, might shake up the Athenian theatre scene while inspiring the polis; Kevin Chamberlin as his slave Xanthias, a reluctant Sancho Panza; Mark Kudisch as the aggressively buff co-god Herakles (hilarious); Chuck Cooper as the bored boatman Charon; Peter Bartlett, in signature doddery mode, as Pluto, ruler of the Underworld; and two contenders for the honor of being brought back to life. Place your bets: Peevish pedant George Bernard Shaw (Dylan Baker, perfection) or Shakespeare (a soulful hunk as embodied by Jordan Donica, last seen as the swoon-inducing Lancelot in Camelot). It’s not that tough a choice, but every actor shines.

Unfortunately, unless you had the foresight to order tickets weeks ahead, your odds of getting to see this Olympian semi-revival were slim to none, so let’s just all pray that the gods grant us a full revival, perhaps with a timely overhaul.

The Frogs opened November 3, 2023, at the Rose Theater, and closed November 4. Information: mastervoices.org

About Sandy MacDonald

Sandy MacDonald started as an editor and translator (French, Spanish, Italian) at TDR: The Drama Review in 1969 and went on to help launch the journals Performance and Scripts for Joe Papp at the Public Theater. In 2003, she began covering New England theater for The Boston Globe and TheaterMania. In 2007, she returned to New York, where she has written for The New York Times, TDF Stages, Time Out New York, and other publications and has served four terms as a Drama Desk nominator. Her website is www.sandymacdonald.com.

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