Review: Comedy Tonight! MasterVoices Does THE FROGS, Or Why Isn't Sondheim at the Met?

The tributes to music master Stephen Sondheim continue and continue some more, though “the big one” is yet to come. I’m talking about the Met.

Bre-ke-ke-kek, in froggy Sondheim-speak, indeed.

After all, the house could use a little new comic blood, as I wrote in a review of Gilbert & Sullivan’s IOLANTHE a few months back. Some of Sondheim’s masterworks are surefire to fit in to the Met’s hallowed walls.

SWEENEY TODD (all right, all right—how many can we take?) and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC had their Lincoln Center “tryouts” back in the old City Opera days at the New York State Theatre (though it could take another 20 years to whip his final piece, “Here We Go,” into shape [particularly “Exterminating Angel”] to even be fit for Broadway). Nevertheless, Sondheim’s previous works remain catnip for musical theatre lovers, even if their previous outing, e.g., THE FROGS at Lincoln Center Theatre, was less than scintillating.

That didn’t stop MasterVoices, under Ted Sperling, from finding it irresistible—and the result was a hit, or, as Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet”: “A hit, a very palpable hit.”  With its libretto by Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane (and Nathan Lane again), it fit the Jazz from Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre stage very nicely indeed. With its juicy music for the tip-top MasterVoices chorus and wonderfully silly parts for the great farceurs on hand for the occasion, dressed by Tracy Christensen (and happy openings for some dancing green amphibians, via Lainie Sakakura's blithe choreography).

The result? THE FROGS worked wonders over this past weekend with the chorus members and orchestra of MasterVoices under Ted Sperling in fine form behind—and above—the action.

The guest stars included Lane himself as the happy-go-lucky narrator of the piece, making sure that his work as co-book-writer was performed to a tee, surrounded by a silly Douglas Sills, a goofy Kevin Chamberlin, Marc Kudisch (as an over-the-top, preening Herakles/Hercules), Chuck Cooper (quirkily crossing the River Styx as Charon), Peter Bartlett (as Pluto [the god, not the dog], Dylan Baker (as a pompous GB Shaw, “author of My Fair Lady”), Jordan Donica (as Shakespeare, fresh from Lancelot in “Camelot”), plus Candice Corbin as the sole female principal, Ariadne, the late wife of Dionysus. So what if some of the players seemed to be playing versions of themselves?! The audience had a ball.

Of course, it was Sondheim’s score that was the draw for many and there was much to admire, even one that was put together with spit and tissue paper. From the opening number (left from A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM), the charmingly hilarious “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience,” delivered hilariously by Sills and Chamberlin (as the god of theatre/wine Dionysus and his man Xanthias). It’s Sondheim’s version of a “list” song: “Please, don’t cough, it tends to throw the actors off… Please don’t fart, there’s very little air and this is art.”

But wait, there’s also the lovely “Ariadne,” “Shaw” (whom Dionysus has been chasing down to bring him back to save Earth) and “Fear No More” for Donica as Shakespeare in good form.

With all due respect to Kevin Puts, Terence Blanchard and Anthony Davis, there’s a big hole in the Met’s repertoire where Sondheim should be found. After all, the New York Philharmonic has found room for him, including a couple of productions of SWEENEY TODD (Patti Lupone and George Hearn, Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson), along with a classic version of FOLLIES.

All right, maybe THE FROGS is not the one to make it as a fully staged production at the Met. But wouldn’t it be fun to have it as a one-off for a little night music! MasterVoices showed that it has the bone structure for the right orchestra, chorus and players—which the Met surely has in spades.

MasterVoices THE FROGS

Photo: Erin Baiano

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