The Frogs |Southwark Playhouse

Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs is a bold and witty musical that blends classical comedy with sharp social commentary. Freely adapted from Aristophanes’ ancient play, it follows a demi-god’s (Dan Buckley) journey to the underworld on a mission to confront the state of art, culture, and humanity. Along the way, the story mixes farce, and philosophy, inviting audiences to reflect on the role of theatre in times of turmoil. With Sondheim’s signature wit and a playful, self-aware tone, The Frogs is both an homage to classical theatre and a timely exploration of its modern relevance.

The dynamic pairing of Buckley as the flamboyant Dionysos and Kevin McHale as the ever-resourceful slave Xanthias brought a witty and irresistibly charismatic energy to the stage from the very first note. Their chemistry crackled during the cleverly crafted opening number—a tongue-in-cheek tutorial on theatre etiquette that immediately pulled the audience into the show’s impertinent world.

With such a captivating start, expectations soared for a performance filled with sharp humour and inventive stagecraft. However, while the duo continued to shine whenever they were on stage, the overall structure of the production failed to deliver on the promise of its vivacious opening, leaving much of the initial excitement frustratingly unresolved.

The show's main weakness lies in its storytelling. While the book by Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane is packed with sharp, modern humour, the narrative sometimes loses clarity beneath its avalanche of references. Without giving too much away, the opening line — “The time is now, the place is Ancient Greece” — sets an intentionally playful but somewhat confusing tone. From the outset, it’s unclear where the show sits in time, and this temporal ambiguity becomes even more pronounced in Act Two, particularly with the unexpected arrival of figures like William Shakespeare.

Further, despite it being the show’s title, the audience gets a glimpse at the frogs on only a single occasion. By the end of the show, this reviewer was questioning whether the involvement of the frogs was literal, or purely metaphorical. The lack of clarity in that regard left quite a few audience members confused by the end of the show. The result is a story that, though consistently funny, occasionally struggles to ground its message amid the chaos.

Yet, what may ultimately redeem the production—indeed, what lingers in the mind long after the final bow—is the stunning synergy of set and lighting design, crafted with ingenuity by Libby Todd and Samuel Biondolillo, respectively. Within the spatial limitations of a thrust stage, Todd conjures an evocative world using deceptively simple materials: wooden boxes and semi-circular platforms. These elements echo the clean lines and proportional harmony of Ancient Greek architecture, subtly rooting the play in a classical visual language.

What might seem at first like minimalist austerity soon reveals itself as marvellously adaptive; segments of the set detach and reconfigure into a boat, an inspired mechanism through which the protagonists voyage to the Underworld. This transformative capability isn’t merely functional—it’s theatrical storytelling at its finest, where form follows narrative.

Complementing this architectural cleverness is Biondolillo’s lighting design, which blends with the intricacies of the show’s style perfectly. The standout moments must be during the journey to the Underworld. With a dark blue background light and a few bright spots shining down upon the boat, creating the illusion of being stuck underground. However, the award for best feature must be attributed to the apparition of the frogs, when the back of the stage would light up with the webbed-foot pattern.

In the end, The Frogs is a curious beast—ambitious, witty, and visually inventive, but ultimately bogged down by its own conceptual sprawl. While standout performances and striking design elements elevate the production, they can’t quite mask the confusion at the heart of its storytelling.

The book, though rich with cleverness, too often feels tangled in its own layers of reference and self-awareness, leaving the audience adrift in a narrative that never fully finds its footing. Despite moments of undeniable charm and theatrical flair, the overall experience is uneven—like a journey with a brilliant guide who keeps losing the map.

One leaves the theatre entertained, occasionally dazzled, but not entirely sure what it all amounted to. The Frogs gestures toward something meaningful, but in the end, its ribbits echo in a fog of metaphor, cleverness, and missed clarity.

The Frogs runs at Southwark Playhouse until 28th June 2025.

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★★★☆☆ (3*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | Photography by Pamela Raith