THE FROGS MUSICAL HOW TO
Sondheim had originally intended to use a song like ''Invocation'' - a blithe series of admonitions to the audience on how to behave in the theater - for ''Funny Thing'' (1962). Lane as its master of ceremonies), and its opening number, ''Invocation to the Gods and Instructions to the Audience,'' has had an afterlife in various revues, including ''Putting It Together.'' The show was given a concert staging at the Library of Congress four years ago (with Mr. Though the production, which starred Larry Blyden, ran only a week, it has since acquired a mythic, Brigadoonish haze in the land of showbiz, thanks in part to its exotic (and acoustically disastrous) aquatic setting and a student chorus that included Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep and the playwright Christopher Durang. Sondheim, with whom he had collaborated on an earlier, happier slice of singing antiquity, ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'' When the show was resurrected in 1974, Shevelove enlisted Mr. Shevelove, whose first (nonmusical) version of ''The Frogs'' was performed in 1941 when he was an instructor at Yale, subsituted Shaw and Shakespeare.
In Aristophanes' account, Dionysos must choose between Aeschylus and Euripides as the playwright to revitalize rotten old Athens. And he clearly hoped to turn the show into a profound parable for our time, however silly its outer trappings.
Lane, who has extensively revised (i.e., piled endless jokes upon) Burt Shevelove's original adaptation, is the moving force behind this latest incarnation of the musical. It is only fair to point out that ''The Frogs'' aspires to be more than froth. The results suggest that to stretch something this slight is to shatter it. Staged in 1974 as a publicity-garnering, hourlong novelty by the Yale School of Drama - around and in the university gymnasium swimming pool, if you please - this bauble of a show has been reshaped to fill two and a half hours. And did I mention that Roger Bart, whose very smile has been known to stop a show, was brought in to replace the television comedian Chris Kattan 10 days before the opening?Īfter dwelling with such craven procrastination on the fine ingredients that make up ''The Frogs,'' I am forced to concede that what should have been a zesty, airy soufflé is a soggy, lumpy batter that never shows the slightest signs of rising. The composer is - reverent pause, please - Stephen Sondheim, whose name alone causes acolytes of the American musical to bow their heads.
(Hugh Jackman is still a parvenu.) The director and choreographer is Susan Stroman (''The Producers,'' ''Contact''), who already possesses a lifetime supply of Tony Awards. The show stars Nathan Lane, who helped turn ''The Producers'' into the kind of hit that almost never happens anymore and is the only actor who qualifies as serious royalty in the thinning world of musical comedy. This musical updating of a 1974 adaptation of Aristophanes' 2,400-year-old comedy of gods and playwrights has the highest concentration of blue-ribbon talent of any show now on Broadway. Consider ''The Frogs,'' which opened last night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. EVEN the crème de la crème can curdle every now and then.
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