A Year With Frog And Toad
A Year With Frog And Toad
Book and Lyrics by Willie Reale
Music by Arnold Lobel
Directed by Wade Hair
Musical Direction by Justin J Scarlat
Choreography by Ryan Skrocki
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park FL</strong>
Well, there’s not a lot of dramatic tension in this show, but the songs are nice and the production is a cute as a bug. Frog (Wade Hair) and Toad (Justin Scarlat) are best friends with relatively few amphibian hobbies – no fly eating or croaking late at night. Rather, they visit each other, drink tea, bake cookies and fret over body shape issues. Hibernation occupies their winter moments and they rely on wind up alarm clocks to time the seasons. Their friends the Birds (Candy Heller, Krystal Gillette and Pilar Rehert) migrate back and forth in leather helmets and fur accents and tease them for their earth bound lifestyle. Mr. Snail (Danny Paeres) delivers letters; he also gets by far the best songs of the show: “The Letter” proclaims his blinding travel speed, and “Coming out of My Shell” shows us he may be slow and slimy, but he has dreams and is working on achieving them. The titular characters have a great chemistry, Frog announces “You’re the toad of my dreams” and how can you not love a line like that? Their songs are paeans to eternal friendship (“Spring”, “He’ll Never Know”) and well intentioned competition (“The Kite”) and helping in times of crisis (“Toad to the Rescue”). A huge chorus fills the stage, there are over a dozen young people in furry creature costumes and the wrangling must have been an adventure for the adults. I rate this as fully fun, and a fine show to introduce youngsters to theater.
For more information, please visit http://www.breakthroughtheatre.com or look them up on Facebook.
