caro hk's List: THEA 111

• seldom staged anywhere, let alone in the Yale exhibition pool
• So, starting tomorrow night in Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, a gargoyled  Gothic cathedral that looks like Notre Dame, he joins Yale's actors, musicians,  singers and swimmers in the hallowed 2,200-seat temple of prowess past, where  Yalies once trained for the Olympics. "It's the nearest thing we have in America  to a Greek amphitheater," says Shevelove, who's pulled together a de-Millian  company of 86, a few of them "townies" and high school students. "We're trying  to recreate the experience of seeing a comedy by Aristophanes -- as it might  have been staged. This is not an aquacade for the fans of Esther Williams."
• Only 1,600 seats and three sides of the hall will be used for the audience. The  "fourth wall" -- that is, one end of the 75-by-42-foot pool -- has become the  main stage area, with platforms mounted against a canopied backdrop. But the  actors and dancers will also perform on the white-tiled rectangular pool deck.  Dionysos himself gets a boat-ride surrounded by 24 water-spouting frogs, who  will be making seven-foot dives and swimming underwater to a dissonant waltz.
• The Shevelove-Sondheim musical, with choreography by Carmen de LaVallade, cost  $35,000. The Yale production, which received a $5,000 grant from the Connecticut  Commission on the Arts
• The 90-minute Yale version, performed without intermission, departs from  Aristophanes during the last sequence at Pluto's palace. In the original,  Dionysos travels to Hades in search of Euripides. He then discovers a debate  going on between Euripides and the ancient Aeschylus. The contest satirizes and  criticizes their literary styles. The new verbal jousting match is between  George Bernard Shaw (Anthony Holland) and Shakespeare (Jeremy Geidt). "We're all  more familiar with their plays, so the satire is easily recognizable," Shevelove  explains. The dialogue for the rival playwrights was culled from the works of  Shaw and Shakespeare by Michael Feingold, literary manager of the Yale company.
• Despite the singin', splashin' and slapstick, "The Frogs" probably remains too  "literary" -- and expensive -- for a Manhattan transfer. It requires a smart  audience that appreciates the theatrical and poetic send-ups.
• Meantime, Carmen de Lavallade, who plays two roles, was up to her statuesque  ears teaching the swimmers -- or, as the company wits call 'em, the Chlorines --  a few balletic movements. One "frog," dazzled by all the famous theatrical  names, demonstrated his skill at walking on the bottom of the pool -- on his  hands. He thought this might be a really super "step" for everyone.

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• 1974 / Shevelove resurrects his show, coopting Stephen Sondheim (with whom he’d  partnered on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) to turn it  into a musical. The production is staged in and around the Olympics-sized  swimming pool at Yale, which also happens to have a renowned drama school. Some  of the students who participate in the production are Meryl Streep, Sigourney  Weaver, and Christopher Durang—who go on to be seriously famous. It might have  been best to leave wet enough alone. But no . . .

• six "musical numbers," stretches of songs between the words, ranging from the  effervescent "Parados," the score for a sensational water ballet, to  "Parabasis," which simply marks time.
• The major shift in the play is that the verbal battle in Hades between Euripides  and Aeschylus now takes place between Shaw and Shakespeare. This gives Mr.  Shevelove a chance to mock a gallery of dead authors from Beaumont and Fletcher  ("Are they always together?") to Brecht ("A big troublemaker"). When Shakespeare  beats Shaw and is about to leave Hades with Dionysos, Pluto bargains, "Take  Shaw, and I'll throw in Isben."
• Though it is often inspired nonsense, "The Frogs" still needs more exercise of  the author-director's imagination. Most of it is staged on a narrow edge of the  pool. Too much of the time the pool itself remains an idle shimmering forestage.  Carmen de Lavallade's choreography is much too confined.

  • review of choreography

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• The Frogs was well worth a trip to Yale's Payne-Whitney Gymnasium pool  for one of the week's worth of performances.  (The show sported a Broadway  star, of sorts: Larry Blyden, who won a Tony for his Hysterium in the  Shevelove-directed 1972 revival of Forum.) The 1974 Frogs was  problematic, the biggest problem being the venue; the reverberating acoustics,  and the sound of all those swimmers-a-swimming, combined to make the affair all  but inaudible. You couldn't really see much, either; Blyden spent a fair  amount of time in a rowboat, surrounded by frog-men, but the dialogue scenes  were all played (if I remember correctly) on a small rectangular platform along  the far end of the pool. Hidden among the ensemble of 50 were Yalies Meryl  Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Durang.