Arden's "A Year With Frog and Toad'

Confession time: I haven't set foot in the Arden Theatre for more than ten years. Having caught several of its early musicals (Company, Sunday in the Park With George, etc.) in the decade after its founding in 1988, I quickly pegged the Arden as a revival house— a sort of fresh-faced version of the mainstream Walnut Street Theatre.

The Arden's offerings were consistently competent, to be sure, and its cast and crew always seemed genuinely excited about their work, much like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a show in a barn. And in recent years many friends and contributors have urged me to give the Arden another look. But when you hunger for cutting-edge theater as opposed to the tried-and-true, and when you live and work within two blocks of the Avenue of the Arts, it's always easier to take the path of least resistance and walk to the Wilma, the Suzanne Roberts, Plays & Players or the Adrienne. To someone like me, the Arden's complex at Second above Market might as well be located in Wyoming. And you don't schlep to Wyoming for yet another Sondheim revival, no matter how competent.

It took a children's show, A Year With Frog and Toad— and a visit from my New York grandchildren— to get me there at last and make a believer out of me. Children's theater can be a hit-or-miss affair, presented to undemanding audiences by actors and directors who'd rather perform for grownups. It takes a special sensibility to perceive the genuinely joyful journey of discovery that theater can offer to wide-eyed young audiences. (When Toad planted seeds and then wondered where the flowers were, my five-year-old granddaughter whispered, "Toad doesn't know that it will take time for the seeds to grow.")

So what impressed me above all about A Year With Frog and Toad was the enthusiastic attention that the Arden crew paid to even the tiniest detail, from the quality of the five-person cast to the exquisitely coordinated dancing and singing to the elaborate rotating sets to the bright costumes to the three-piece live band. Even the pricing policy for snacks in the lobby at intermission ($2 for everything, no waiting) and the accommodatingly competent and conspicuously orange-T-shirted lobby staff had obviously been carefully planned in advance.

The go in escargot

A Year With Frog and Toad is, to be sure, a tried-and-true musical— the Arden first produced it in 2004— with no story to speak of, just a year's worth of adventures in the relationship of two friends who happen to be amphibian swamp creatures. But the upbeat music (by Robert Reale) and the sophisticated lyrics (by Willie Reale) manage to delight kids and adults simultaneously. (Frog, describing Toad, sings, "He's not so good in sports/And of course he's got those warts"; the snail entrusted to deliver a letter from Frog to Toad sings reassuringly, "I put the go in escargot.")

The first-rate cast was peopled entirely by veterans of genuine grownup shows at the Arden, Walnut and elsewhere, all equipped with excellent singing voices, moving and harmonizing together flawlessly, and discreetly miked so every word was audible. Frog was portrayed by Jeffrey Coon, who was last seen at the Walnut, for better or worse, humanizing the oafish Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire to such an extent that the audience wound up rooting for him against the fragile Blanche DuBois. Ben Dibble, who recently played the title role in Arden's Candide and is slated to play Leo Bloom in The Producers at the Walnut, seemed no less elated to be cast here as Toad, a role in which he displayed all the loveable hyperkinetic vulnerability of the young Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz.

The power of positive feedback

The production was designed not merely to entertain but also to educate (and not just about the four seasons). Prior to the show, a crew member explained to the audience that actors perform better when they get positive feedback— specifically, applause— a valid observation that rarely occurs to more sophisticated adult theatergoers. The show's conclusion was followed immediately by a question period that enabled kids in the audience to talk directly to the actors while the Arden's crew members demonstrated the magic of the stage— in this case their ability to simulate water, fire, snow and falling leaves. Then the actors moved into the lobby, where shy kids got a second chance to engage them one-on-one.

From the Arden's choice of this engaging fantasy to its execution, clearly many capable people gave a great deal of thought to this production. These are folks who obviously love the theater and also know what they're doing, a synergy that's not as common as you might think. I look forward now to seeing what they can do for grownups. There is after all something to be said for the tried and true.


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