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music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Burt Shrevelove adapted by Nathan Lane, directed by Griffin Hewitt

Talk Is Free Theatre, Spiegeltent, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake

July 11-13, 2025

Pluto: “You’re not afraid to die, Once you’re dead.”

The ever-surprising Talk Is Free Theatre has yet another feather in its cap. It has brought its production of a major Sondheim rarity, The Frogs, to the Shaw Festival. Given that this version of Aristophanes’ comedy features both George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare, one might think that either the Shaw Festival or the Stratford Festival would already have produced it. Yet, since they have not, we are lucky that TIFT has had the gumption to do it. The show is hilarious, well performed and inventively staged.

The Frogs is one of Stephen Sondheim’s lesser-known musicals. Burt Shrevelove, who wrote the book for Sondheims’s 1962 hit A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, wrote an adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs (405 BC) while he was a graduate student at Yale. He asked Sondheim to write music for the show in the places where the original had choral sections. The show was first performed in 1974 in the Yale University swimming pool. About five years later Nathan Lane came across a copy of the libretto in a book shop and decided he would like to revive the show for Broadway. Lane revised Shrevelove’s book and Sondheim wrote seven new songs for the piece. The revised version opened on Broadway and closed 11 weeks later – not a success.

Broadway, however, does not always know best. Despite its failure, various companies staged the musical and exposed its better qualities. While no one will claim that The Frogs is one of Sondheim’s greatest works, it is a solid piece of entertainment. Just as Funny Thing is the closest most people will get to seeing an ancient comedy by Plautus, The Frogs is the closest most people will get to seeing an ancient comedy by Aristophanes.

In Aristophanes’ original, Dionysos, god of wine and drama, is concerned about the sorry state of Greek tragedy and decides that the solution is to go down to Hades to bring back the greatest playwright of all time to reinvigorate the theatre. For Aristophanes, this playwright was Euripides (c. 480-406 BC), author of The Bacchae, Medea, Electra and The Trojan Women, who had died just the previous year.

To find the way to travel to Hades, Dionysos and his trusty servant Xanthias, visit the famed hero Herakles, who had journeyed to Hades, killed the famed three-headed guard dog Cerberus, and returned to earth. Dionysos and Xanthias follow Herakles’ instructions and arrive at the river Styx that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. After comic negotiations with the ferryman Charon, the two manage to cross the Styx even though they are attacked by the annoying frogs that give the play its title. The two meet the region’s ruler Pluto. (In Greek myth, the god of Hades is also named Hades, but presumably to avoid confusion, Shrevelove uses the Roman name Pluto.) In the original, Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BC), author of the Oresteia and Prometheus Bound, challenges Dionysos view that Euripides is the greatest playwright. The two have a contest and Dionysos proclaims Aeschylus the winner and takes him back to earth. In Shrevelove’s version, Dionysos goes to Hades to seek George Bernard Shaw, Shaw is challenged by Shakespeare and Dionysos brings Shakespeare back.

Nathan Lane’s main contribution to Shrevelove’s book is to expand Dionysos’ reason for wanting to revive the world’s greatest playwright. In Aristophanes and Shrevelove, Dionysos’ only concern is to make theatre better. Lane, however, noting that Aristophanes wrote during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), felt that theatre had an important role during the Second Gulf War (2003-11) supposedly provoked by 9/11. Lane has Dionysos say that his goal is to “bring back to earth a brilliant writer who can speak to the problems of our society and give us comfort, wit and wisdom. And also challenge our complacencies”. Dionysos finds the method of the present regime troubling: “ Our leaders have filled us with fear. And that’s the way they like us. Frightened and vulnerable. So they can do as they please”.

Though Lane wrote these words in 2004, they eerily resonate in 2025. Aristophanes’ plays always have a political dimension, and Lane, through these additions gives Shrevelove’s version the political edge that it lacked.

When Talk Is Free theatre performed The Frogs in Barrie before travelling to Niagara-on-the-Lake, it staged the musical in the round and outdoors. The Production Note to Shrevelove’s version states: “The Frogs is intended to be a spectacle and everything possible should be done to make it so”. This is not the approach that TIFT takes and the show is all the better for it. TIFT takes a less is more approach to make its design as witty as Sondheim’s music and lyrics.

Designer Varvara Evchuk has dressed the leads and Chorus in everyday gear with green accents and green sunglasses. Dionysos stands out by being clad in an off-white linen suit with an orarion sewn onto its left shoulder to highlight his divinity. Xanthias looks like any student on a hike. The mythic Herakles was distinguished by his wearing of the skin of the Nemean lion he had slain. Here he merely wears a T-shirt with a lion’s face printed on it. Evchuk has made puzzling choices for Pluto, who wears a pink bob wig, a sequined suit and a sash emblazoned with his name as if from a beauty contest.

Director Griffin Hewitt makes clever use of props. Collapsible vuvuzelas appear not just as fanfare horns but also as oars to row Charon’s ferry, spyglasses and as Herakles’ club. Green-painted triangles of wood can become doors, the Charon’s ferry or, combined with other wooden pieces, the giant frog that swallows Dionysos. Lighting designer Nic Vincent creates innumerable clever effects from the portable LED light wands.

Hewitt and choreographer Julio Fuentes have made great use of the strange playing area by employing not only the central circle but also the ring of space that surrounds the first ranks of seating around the central circle. As in Aristophanes, the actors are aware of an audience from the beginning, lending an air of metatheatricality to the entire show.

The success of the show rests heavily on the actor who plays Dionysos. Luckily, TIFT has cast John-Michael Scapin in the role. He is a classically trained tenor with a delightful sense of comic timing. Scapin plays the god as a rather fey young man who may be a god but is also amusingly aware of his own cowardice and fear. Yet, Scapin is also able to make Dionysos’ speeches about the evil state of the world ring with sincerity and his expressions of love for Ariadne authentically passionate. Sondheim’s often patter-filled songs, however, don’t allow Scapin to show off his light but strong voice as often as one would like.

As Dionysos’ slave Xanthias (all slaves in Aristophanes have this name), Taylor Garwood is very funny. Garwood plays the ever-suffering servant whom the master always thrusts into situations he doesn’t want to face.

Kyle Brown distinguishes his roles as Herakles and Pluto. He shows both as egocentric but makes Herakles as dim and muscle-bound as Pluto is bright and sensuous. As Pluto, Brown really puts across the show’s best song, “Hades”, praising the Underworld as the hot place to be. Dean Deffett plays his two roles quite differently. As Charon, he is gruff and intimidating. As Pluto’s doorman Aeakos, he is gigglingly effeminate.

Richard Lam plays George Bernard Shaw and Nolan Moberly plays Shakespeare. Both exude self-confidence while Lam’s Shaw has an aura of stuffiness and Moberly’s Shakespeare an aura of rebelliousness. In their climatic contest (called “agon” in classical comedy), both could stand to present their characters more forcefully and quote their respective writers with more authority.

I am sorry to have missed The Frogs when it was staged in Barrie because it was played outdoors in the back yard of a private home. Other TIFT shows I’ve seen in that kind of setting paradoxically combine feelings both of intimacy and openness. The Spiegeltent, a 19th-century circular wooden structure, has an interior that looks like a mirrored jewel-box. As a performing space, it is far from ideal. It is under-air-conditioned so that when filled with people it becomes stifling. Only the front row of seats has good sight lines. Otherwise, heads, pillars and sides of booths block parts of the view and the voices, even though miked, cannot always be heard.

The show’s run will have ended by the time this review is published, but let’s hope that TIFT finds a way to remount the show in other venues. Sondheims’s The Frogs is a delightful show that provides insight into the ancient world and ours while raising questions about the relation of art to society that are still painfully relevant.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: From performances at Barrie: John-Michael Scapin as Dionysos and Taylor Garwood as Xanthias; Richard Lam as Shaw, John-Michael Scapin as Dionysos and Nolan Moberly as Shakespeare; Chorus of Frogs; Kyle Brown as Herakles and John-Michael Scapin as Dionysos. © 2025 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.shawfest.com.