REVIEW: MasterVoices Sets 'The Frogs' Afloat
Above artwork by Owen Gent.
November 3, 2023
New York City’s veritable festival of Stephen Sondheim continued with a rare trio of performances of one of the deep cuts, The Frogs, in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. MasterVoices, formerly the Collegiate Chorale founded in 1941, has performed astoundingly diverse repertoire in recent years under the artistic direction of Ted Sperling. This has included a number of less-frequently seen works for the stage — the MasterVoices forces supplemented with notables from theatrical and operatic stages — such as Weill’s Lady in the Dark, Gershwin’s Let ‘Em Eat Cake, and in spring 2024, a concert version of Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath. The Frogs is quirky, but this ambitious, multi-disciplinary event — costumes by Tracy Christensen, lighting by Shelby Loera, and choreography by Lainie Sakakura — proved it might have legs, after all.
The Frogs is a bit of an oddity in Sondheim’s oeuvre. In 1974, Burt Shevelove, the composer’s collaborator on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, was reviving for Yale Repertory Theatre his decades-earlier student staging of Aristophanes’ 405 B.C. comedy The Frogs in an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool. Sondheim, fresh from composing A Little Night Music, agreed to compose a half-dozen songs for the occasion as a favor, thinking “it would be a lark.” It was a chance to “fiddle with ritual and structural aspects of Greek comedy without fear of letting down investors or being criticized for ‘cerebral’ songwriting.” In his book Finishing the Hat, Sondheim describes the production as “one of the few deeply unpleasant professional experiences I’ve had, largely because it was so unprofessional.”
Its genesis may have been slippery, but the score contained some inspired music and lyrics. Dionysos, god of wine and drama, despondent at the complacency of society, decides that a great writer is needed to rouse and reinvigorate civilization. He and his slave, Xanthias, travel to the Underworld to retrieve George Bernard Shaw, hoping he’ll inspire the world anew.
In Aristophanic fashion, the play begins with a “Prologos: Invocation and Instructions to the Audience,” in which the actors admonish the audience: “Please don’t cough, / It tends to throw the actors off.” The Greek Chorus is represented by, yes, frogs, who “ribet” in dissonant counterpoint, and in their entrance number “Parados: The Frogs,” sing: “Brek-kek-kek-kek! / Whaddaya care the world’s a wreck? / Leave ‘em alone, send ‘em a check, / Sit in the sun and what the heck, / Waddaya wanna break your neck / For?”
Scene from The Frogs at MasterVoices. Photo by Erin Baiano.
Another standout is the “Hymnos: Evoe!,” a paean to wine: “Out of wine comes truth, / Out of truth the vision clears, / And with vision soon appears / A grand design. / From the grand design / We can understand the world. / And when you understand the world, / You need a lot more wine!”
Greek comedy traditionally culminated in a debate, and here, it transpires that Shaw must compete with Shakespeare to accompany Dionysos back to earth. The Bard wins the contest with his poetic take on death, “Fear no more / The heat o’ the sun.” Simple, yet supremely moving, it’s a rare instance of Sondheim setting another lyricist to music.
Hop forward to 2004. Nathan Lane and director/choreographer Susan Stroman jump into the pool, inflating the show into a full-fledged Broadway production at Lincoln Center. Sondheim supplemented his score, penning a handful of new numbers for individual characters. The show opened to cold-blooded reviews, the conceit proving tricky to justify too much bloat.
Nathan Lane hosting MasterVoices’ The Frogs. Photo by Erin Baiano.
Ted Sperling — joined by Lane himself, serving as host and narrator — has resurrected Jonathan Tunick’s 18-piece orchestration (including 2 bassoons), employed a cohort of adventurous dancers and a cast of marquee actors, and sculpted the work into a persuasive intermission-less 1 hour 40 minutes.
Douglas Sills as Dionysos and Kevin Chamberlin as Xanthias were perfectly cast, walking the fine line between comedy and pathos. As Herakles, Mark Kudisch pitched “Dress Big” — a 2004 addition in which he advises Dyonisos on dressing to impress in the Underworld — with bravado: “You gotta dress big / dress bold, dress large. / You gotta look forceful / and resourceful and in charge.”
Douglas Sills and Kevin Chamberlin in The Frogs. Photo by Erin Baiano.
Chuck Cooper, as the deadpan Charon, velvet-toned Candice Corbin as Ariadne, and Dylan Baker as pretentious Shaw contributed infallably. The biggest laughs belonged to Peter Bartlett, comic genius in the role of hilariously effete Pluto, King of the Hades, assuring that “You’re not afraid of time rushing by / Not afraid of oceans running dry / All because you’re not afraid to die / Once you’re dead.”
Sperling not only conducted the orchestra, but also served as stage director, ensuring a flowing stage picture: evocative lighting, traffic entrances and exits were all well-motivated by the music. And what tasty music Sondheim provided. Stylistically, the score is a hodgepodge, but it holds together in part due to its variety.
“I Love to Travel” is Sondheim at his wordy-funniest. Dionysos’s heartfelt ballad remembering his wife “Ariadne” blossoms into one of the most lyrical melodies Sondheim wrote in his post-Passion decades, and the showbiz-zy production numbers introducing “Hades” and “Shaw” were polished here, with dynamic playing from the orchestra in elaborate dance sequences. A chorus line sings of Shaw: “Such sanity, humanity, / Who cares about the vanity? / His work is just so literate, / It leaves you all atwitter, it’s / Got gravity and levity, / That’s why it’s got longevity.”
Jordan Donica as William Shakespeare. Photo by Erin Baiano.
The Chorus assesses matters, as in Greek drama, in the haunting “Parabasis: It’s Only a Play.” The message is arcane — too poetic for Broadway, perhaps — but sardonically resonant, as MasterVoices’ soloists took the reigns and chimed in: “Let the leaders raise your voices for you. / Let the critics make your choices for you. / Somewhere somebody rejoices for you — / The dead. / And a leader’s useful to curse, / And the state of things could be worse. / And besides… / It’s only a play.”
Jordan Donica’s luxurious, uncomplicated delivery of “Fear No More” was the highlight of the evening. The acrobatic, Prokofiev-like polyphony for the frogs, and the razzmatazz of the glossy character tunes melted away, revealing Sondheim’s pure musical voice: The sensuality of Shakespeare’s poetry briefly pierced the composer’s usual arch ambivalence, extracting an ever-so-brief, yet thoroughly complete, musical jewel.
The company of The Frogs. Photo by Erin Baiano.
The sheer size of the MasterVoices chorus, as beautifully prepared as they were, inevitably rendered some of the dense lyrics blurry in spite of a solid sound design by veteran Scott Lehrer. But, Sondheim’s sourness and intelligence came through, and Lane’s assured presence, and Sperling’s musical mastery made this amphibious, if wholly non-commercial, work of art feel timely and poignant.
***
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