Review: THE FROGS, Southwark Playhouse

The recent UK premiere of Here We Are, Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, certainly demonstrated that the much-mourned legend had his flaws. His aficionados already knew this, though – Sondheim had nearly as many flops as he had successes, and The Frogs was one of them.

Like Here We Are, this adaptation of the Aristophanes comedy of the same name is an inventive concept mired by a messy production history, having begun life as a revue performed at Yale University in the 1970s, before being dragged from obscurity and straightened out into a two-act musical in 2004. The result is structural and tonal inconsistencies that threaten to undermine all of what Sondheim does best.

Georgie Rankcom’s new production doesn’t do a great deal to remedy these issues. Burt Shevelove’s book (expanded in the 2000s by Nathan Lane) is a jarring blend of mythological pastiche, physical comedy lifted verbatim from the original Greek text, and attempts to link Aristophanes’s central theme – the role of art in society – to the present day. A stellar cast, led by Dan Buckley as theatre god Dionysos and Kevin McHale (known to a generation of theatre kids as Artie from Glee) as his slave/trusty sidekick Xanthias, commit exuberantly to all of these ideas, but don’t manage to connect them coherently.

Even more of an issue is that the central dilemma around which the play revolves doesn’t really make sense. Just as Aristophanes’s Dionysos had to descend to the Underworld and choose whether Aeschylus or Euripides would be a better influence on Athens’s struggling, wartorn society, Sondheim’s version of the deity has to make the same decision between Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw – he who speaks to our hearts, versus he who speaks to our minds.

You’d be forgiven for questioning that particular choice of writers to do theatrical battle – the script pits Shakespeare’s purer poetic mores against Shaw’s skewering, politicised witticisms, decrying “political” art in a way that feels awkward in the current climate of frequent artistic censorship. Some contemporary metatheatrical humour, about Bad Cinderella or social media influencers, helps this production feel a little more current; however, replicating Aristophanes’s incisive cultural commentary for 2025 takes more than a chuckling “sound familiar?” every time we hear about an Athenian general’s poor leadership skills.

This feels like pedantry, though, when you consider how much riotous good fun this show is – after all, we do get the ghosts of Princess Diana and Tina Turner in a drag number about the benefits of being dead, led by UK Drag Race star Victoria Scone. The cast all have the chops to handle the show’s mishmash of comic styles, and McHale’s neurotic take on Xanthias is especially well matched with Buckley’s flamboyant Dionysos. And, of course, the titular Chorus of Frogs, who represent those who “hate new ideas”, are a feast for the eyes, performing Matt Nicholson's intricate choreography in outfits that can only be described as a cross between Chappell Roan and primary school swimming lessons.

A profound look at the human condition Frogs is not, and its lofty statements about whether art ought to function as escapism, as educational tool, or as route to pure beauty are never quite earned. But it’s still a lot of fun, and maybe that’s tonic enough in these troubled times.

The Frogs runs at Southwark Playhouse until 28 June