The Frogs - Sondheim - Jermyn Street

Apr 2, 2017 17:28:57 GMT anthony40 said:

Apr 2, 2017 17:26:49 GMT danieljohnson14 said:

I like Sweeny and Into the Woods, but he's not like, my favourite composer or anything.

And there my friend, is the reason that you're not aware of The Frogs

Tell a lie, I know Meryl Streep did it, but that is because Meryl Streep is a goddess.

Someone educate me though, is this a famous piece? Was it a flop and that is why I have never heard of it? I have literally never heard about it other than the fact I know Meryl Streep did it.

What a fascinating failure this show is. Amidst a back-catalogue of profound and progressive stage work, this middling, moderately-amusing political pastiche is clearly minor Sondheim – sometimes funny, often hummable, mostly mediocre. It’s not a bad show (it’s a four-star production of a three-star script) and it’s not Sondheim’s worst (Do I Hear a Waltz isn’t irredeemable, but isn’t much good either – mostly Laurents’ book there), but it’s definitely not a great show either. It’s a footnote ticked off our completist lists. And yet, I feel (both due to the show itself and the strong production) that there’s far more worth to this production of The Frogs than just juvenile doggerel. There’s far more worth to the script than its simplicity suggests – or, its simplicity gives it its worth. There’s not a great deal of depth to The Frogs, and that’s what makes it flawed, fascinating and a little bit fantastic – rather than plumb profound depths, Sherelove, Lane and Sondheim wear their hearts on their sleeves, and what hearts they turn out to be.

Like I say, it’s not bad. No show with such a rambunctious opening number could be (the fact that the number was the original number for A Funny Thing Happened does explain that, mind). Sondheim is biologically incapable of writing badly – so even if “Dress Big” isn’t “Send in the Clowns”, it’s still amusing; even if the Frog Chorus (as per its Aristophanes) does little to plot, character or subtext, it’s still tuneful. The problem is, simply, that the scatty narrative lacks the narrative of his best, and crucially the character(s) of his best. Those two songs are cameos from never-seen-before, never-seen-after people, and barely progress plot. They’re good songs, but at his platform last year Sondheim said that his songs work best not as singles, but married to their character; here, the lovely mournfulness given to Dionysus aside, Pluto, Xanthias, Hercules and the rest aren’t characters, they’re Aristophanean stock figures, which means their songs are what Sondheim dislikes – rather than character songs, just songs.

Where it’s really let down, thus, is with its book, but I lay the blame for this not at Lane or Sherelove’s feet but at Aristophanes’. As anyone who’s endured either studying these satires or seeing even good casts try to make them modern will know, Old Comedy isn’t always funny, or, frankly, good. Lots is satire, and satire ages very quickly – pre-Brexit satire’s already obsolete, so pre-Christian satire... The Frogs is, in my opinion, Aristophanes’ worst – Aristophanes was devilishly on-point in pricking academic egos, familial relationships, a strangely relevant class system, and even good and faithful versions of these are still funny; this, on the other hand, is a too-long journey into the underworld, followed by random, useless frogs, followed by a too-straight-laced argument which is only interesting because, in Aeschylus, the beginning of The Libation Bearers is lost, but Aristophanes’ character of Aeschylus quotes it so it’s remained – it’s historical trivia. Sherelove sticks too closely to this ramshackle structure (as, admittedly, does Sondheim) and thus the original script’s a scattershot road-movie and then lit-crit; by expanding this, Lane is likely the reason it’s broader and richer in character, but he too can’t resolve the original’s clunkiness. Clearly, again, it’s not a bad script, but flawed in the clunky way Aristophanes is flawed, shallow in the way Clouds or The Birds or Lysistrata have worth. The Sondheim/Sherelove/Lane/Aristophanes hodgepodge falls between two stools of neither being the rip-roaring comedy of Forum nor the profound legend-rewriting of Sweeney. Unlike the former, it tries to purport a proper a message; unlike the latter, its simple message belies its student origins: ‘Love people while they’re alive, hate bad politics, and open a book every now and then’.

That said, I think it’s a great production of a good script. Intimacy will only get you so far – what makes the Jermyn Street Theatre so special is it demands innovation, and frankly this show was as well-served here as it would have been at the NT’s Olivier. Grace Wessel’s basically setting it in a swimming pool is a nice touch, whilst the minimalism of cast and set gives the clunk from one set-piece to the next a certain fluidity. She also respects the work, and doesn’t play the non-jokes for laughs, which serves it well. Shaw does need a beard, mind. But it’s Michael Matus’ performance which profoundly elevates this show and this staging. Initially, preconceptions and all, I was somewhat surprised that he was slightly underplaying the campness and the pompousness and the Nathan-Lane-ness of it all – but as the show rolled on, the sincerity he bought to it from the beginning paid off in spades, as it’s this sincerity which made the “Ariadne” song so moving, this sincerity which gave the competition actual stakes, this sincerity which gave the production more emotional heft than the play deserves. Yes, he was also very funny throughout, but by tempering this silliness Matus – and Wessel – gave the Sondheim the character which made us care for an Aristophanes for which I don’t care.

So that’s that – four stars to Jermyn Street (congrats on the sincerity, shame about the script), three to Sondheim (congrats on the satire, shame about the shallowness).

And yet...

The script and the songs do, indeed, have little more to say than ‘Love people while they’re alive, hate bad politics, and open a book every now and then’. But boy, how well it says this. How sincerely, passionately, and desperately it says this. Its failing is its simplicity, but its salvation is its sincerity. In The Best Worst Thing, Sondheim talks about trying to get back to that teenage idealism. In this – perhaps its greatest virtue is it being originally written for students – he captures that infantile political idealism that goes with being a student, albeit with the vocabulary of a poet and the musicality of a maestro. Assassins deals with its politics sharply and satirically. This is simple, and beautiful for it. Watching Dionysus truly appreciate the great romantic poetry, to come to terms with death, to sacrifice arch on-the-nose windbaggery and go for simple, sensitive sonnets – and to do all this with the genuine, principled notion that by doing this he could change the world – the desire for change and sincerity to do so is astounding, inspiring, amazing. There’s no archness! No cynicism! No mockery or mirth! It’s written as if to genuinely say that reading more sonnets can help us overcome death, help us find our way, and ultimately help us stop Richard Nixon/George Bush/Donald Trump – or perhaps more aptly, that, actually, we do read to think, to learn, to search for truth and to live in OUR lives, and that reading more sonnets is thus our grassroots political movement where we speak up, get sore, and now, we start. It could have made a mockery of idealism.  Instead it IS idealistic. Sincerely, that’s inspiring.

There are minor flaws in this production which some tinkering and a bigger location would solve; there are major flaws with this shows which can’t be solved. But sod it – for all its many blatant simple shallow faults, I loved it. The next time someone thinks Sondheim’s simply a cynic, I’ll simply send them to the last fifteen minutes of this. It’s through the filter of this imperfect but impassioned project – the sensitivity of which is perfectly captured by this production – that I’ll view Sondheim’s works from now on, knowing that there’s not only a political animal and a status-quo shaker within his giant mind, but a sincere student romantic within there too. It’s an imperfect production of an imperfect show, but the politics and sincerity on display meant it repeatedly hit just the right nerve. When I later relisten and rewatch other Sondheims – cynical Sondeims and ironic Sondheims – I’m going to have the memory of this, this stupid and simple yet sensitive and subtle and sad Sondheim.