The Frogs, Southwark Playhouse review - great songs save updated Aristophanes comedy

As a regular theatregoer, you learn pretty quickly that there’s no story too bizarre to work as a musical. Cannibalistic murders in Victorian London? Faking a miracle in smalltown USA? The westernisation of Japan? And that’s just Sondheim…

Aristophanes gets an MT makeover in South London. The Frogs, his comedy telling the tale of Dionysos’ journey to Hades, was freely adapted by Burt Shevelove 50 years ago and supplemented by Nathan Lane with, crucially, songs by Stephen Sondheim. It concerns a quest to bring back George Bernard Shaw to heal an ailing world through the power of theatre! The Broadway legends’ book is working side by side with Sondheim’s songs and, let’s be honest, in a world that really does need saving, a dead Irish playwright seems as likely a saviour as any candidates currently available.

We’re full meta from the start with two actors, Dan Buckley and Kevin McHale (pictured below), bickering over which play to put on. We’re given a full set of instructions of Patti Lupone strictness for how to behave at the theatre (there’s no shying away from didacticism in this show) and the two indecisive thesps soon return as the frog-fearing God of Theatre, Dionysos, and his sardonic sidekick, Xanthias. So, with an anachronistic reference or two (including one very good joke from McHale, trading on his Glee fame), we’re off down below.  

There are times when the circumlocutions required to wedge the source material into a buddy movie / supernatural quest format wear a bit thin, but there’s always another eccentric character round the corner (and the threat of those change-challenging conservative frogs - we know who you are!) to keep us on our toes.Joaquin Pedro Valdes gives us a vain gym-bunny Herakles, whose identity Dionysos borrows somewhat unconvincingly for the trip. As Charon, running a boat-service across the Styx to Hades (less Hell, more Vegas), Carl Patrick smokes some weed and chills out amusingly after giving some falsely comforting reassurance about the frightening frogs. Victoria Scone is Pluto, who lords it over The Underworld in a drag queen's full fig.

The central conceit of the show would grate rather too soon as we meet these larger than life, indeed, larger than death, characters, were it not for the quality of the songs, not quite peak Sondheim, but there’s plenty of room below that level that’s still very good. Crucially, they’re sung superbly with real West End quality, even if we’ve already noted that we’re a couple of miles away and supported by an energetic chorus. 

Highlights include Herakles’ advice to “Dress Big”, another slice of meta in “It’s Only a Play” and a very Into The Woods inspired entr'acte. In true Sondheim style, the clever internal rhymes and complicated rhythms are not conducive to toe-tapping nor singing on the bus home, but we’re very much aware that we’re in the presence of a master. Hats off too to choreographer, Matt Nicholson who, like director, Georgie Rankcom, gets the most out of a small cast and small space. 

Eventually we get to Shaw, Martha Pothen in a beard and with just the right level of pomposity and Shakespeare, a feisty Bart Lambert, pitted against each other for a 1970s version of a rap battle for the prize of a trip upstairs. Truth be told, it goes on a little too long (I mean, we know who’s going to win) before there’s another sermon to believe in ourselves and to back words with deeds. Finally, we're free to turn our phones back on without invoking the wrath of the gods.

Does it all work? No is the answer, the tone never quite settling, the classical tropes butting up against the knowing contemporary nods and winks, the spectre of pantomime, in this country if not the USA, never far away. The production can’t quite commit to the sheer strangeness of its conception because it keeps being pulled back to its desire to speak directly to a contemporary audience. Its message is a good one, but I suspect less would be more as it's preaching to the choir.  

Nevertheless, we do get over a dozen strong songs given full value by a fine set of singers. And that’s well worth a visit to that present day Hades, Elephant and Castle Tube station. 

• The Frogs at Southwark Playhouse until 28 June
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