The Frogs

Original Broadway Cast Recording

1. Opening Fanfare
2. Invocation and Instructions to the Audience
3. “It Is Time We Start Our Journey”
4. I Love to Travel
5. Dress Big
6. I Love to Travel [reprise]
7. All Aboard
8. On the River Styx
9. Ariadne
10. The Frogs
11. Hymn to Dionysos
12. Hades
13. It’s Only a Play
14. Shaw
15. The Contest
16. Fear No More
17. All Aboard [reprise]
18. Hymn to Dionysos [reprise]
19. Final Instructions to the Audience

A proper assessment of this enriched version of a Sondheim side project will have to wait (even longer than the nine years it has already done so) until I can sit down and really tackle the overarching aspects. But, for the nonce (“two nonces, at most”), I’ll just note that it packs a great deal of promise as a stage spectacle that also happens to deliver Ancient Greek playwriting—a nifty double act we don’t often see. Unfortunately I’m hindered in my appreciation of it by the fact that I’m just not a big Nathan Lane fan (and, like Bill Murray, he is always very much his own character in whatever he plays); he strikes me as being largely one-note…and frankly that note was Ethel Merman’s first.

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Comments © 2008/2017 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.