Theatre review: The Frogs

I've seen two previous shows from Spymonkey, the veteran physical comedy troupe who tend to be a lot more hit than miss. Even if I wasn't seeing it on a quiet Monday night their latest show would come across as a little less full-on than the others though, as it comes with an added element of melancholy as the established quartet is now a duo: Petra Massey has left the company and Stephan Kreiss died suddenly in 2021, so there's an added significance to the remaining pair of Toby Park and Aitor Basauri tackling Aristophanes' The Frogs, itself written in reaction to the death of a beloved theatrical figure. That figure is Euripides, the Greek tragedian who'd died a year before Aristophanes premiered this parody of a heroic quest. With him gone Dionysus, Olympian god of drama (Park) thinks theatre is doomed, and decides to get him back.

Theatre review: The Frogs

Well into the realm of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, it sounds as if the original 1974 version of The Frogs was never even meant as a full musical. Sondheim and Burt Shevelove took Aristophanes' comedy and built a short revue out of it, not very well-received and soon becoming an obscurity. Nathan Lane then took that revue and expanded it into a full-length show in 2004, Sondheim bulking it up with seven new songs. This, too, was poorly received and went back to being a footnote, but the Jermyn Street Theatre now gives it another try, inspired by the bleak state of current affairs that mirrors the premise of Aristophanes' original: Dionysus (Michael Matus,) god of theatre and wine among other things, despairs at the state of the world and decides people need a great mind like Bernard Shaw to boost their spirits while showing them the error of their ways.