Splash-In on the Styx

By T.E. Kalem

THE FROGS

Freely adapted from Aristophanes by BURT SHEVELOVE

Music and Lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Brekekekex ko-aex ko-aex! As the famed croaking chant, the croaking chorus of the frogs in Aristophanes' comedy, sounds over Yale's Payne-Whitney Gym pool, it signifies that 21 young Yalies and New Haven townies skimpily clad in green fishnet tights are hitting the water. They fan out to the center of the pool and in a Busby Berkeley pinwheel formation circle the battered dinghy in which a wizened, whiskered Charon (Charles Levin) is poling across this Ivy League Styx. It is a moment of splashing good humor in this aquatic spoof of a spoof.

Adapter-Director Burt Shevelove and Composer-Lyricist Stephen Sondheim have teamed up to employ Aristophanes as a springboard for the sort of romping farce that they achieved together with a Plautus original in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The result this time, while thoroughly amiable, is more tentative and less hilarious, chiefly because the Aristophanic model does not offer as robust comic material as the Plautine.

The Frogs, as Aristophanes wrote it, is a kind of ironically motivated slapdash quest to restore a major dead dramatist to the ranks of the living. It might wryly be regarded as one of those periodic efforts to save the ailing theater. The god Dionysus (Larry Blyden) resolves to go down to Hades and bring back Euripides. In the Shevelove version, Bernard Shaw substitutes. As his companion, Dionysus takes along his obese, grumbling Sancho Panza-like servant Xanthias (Michael Vale). They have their slapstick encounters, not only with the cranky Charon, who speaks like a movie gold prospector, but with enticing houris, underworld strong-arm men, termagants, drunks and, finally, the haughty, unamused Pluto (Jerome Dempsey), god of the underworld. It seems that Shakespeare sits on the throne of honor as the No. 1 dramatist in Hades. (In Aristophanes' original it is Aeschylus.) A battle royal of quotations ensues between Shakespeare (Jeremy Geidt) and Shaw (Anthony Holland). The chorus of jurors votes against Shaw on the grounds that he is a dry, cerebral rationalist while Shakespeare is the archpoet 3 of the human soul.

Shevelove has peppered the script with contemporary theatrical in-jokes and quizzical one-liners. As the god of wine and drama, Dionysus quips: "A little wine will get you through a lot of drama." One knows by past performance that the Sondheim lyrics are contrapuntally clever and that his music is astringently bittersweet, but the acoustics round the pool do not permit absolute proof. If Yale should opt for participatory theater, the show could close with a gorgeously refreshing swim-in. . T.E. Kalem

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.