'Frog and Toad" beckons children to B'way

NEW YORK, May 7 (UPI) -- Musical shows for young audiences rarely make their way to Broadway, but "A Year With Frog and Toad" based on a series of beloved, award-winning books by author-illustrator Arnold Lobel has settled in at the Cort Theater to enchant children of all ages.

The last children's show produced on Broadway, "Seussical: The Musical" based on the Dr. Seuss books, was a $10.5 million flop at the box office. It closed, leaving the field to the long-run Disney musicals designed to entertain children and adults alike -- "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast."

"Frog and Toad" began as a workshop project at Vassar College, was premiered at the Children's Theater of Minneapolis, and moved to New York last fall to play the New Victory Theater, which specializes in children's entertainment, for two weeks. It got rave reviews and attracted sell-out audiences, encouraging producer Bob Boyett, a former television producer, to move it to a larger Broadway house.

Remounting the show for the Cort Theater cost $2.9 million and tickets for the 95-minute show have had to be priced at a Broadway standard of up to $90 for orchestra seats, for which free booster seats are available for tots. This makes "Frog and Toad" a high risk venture never quite dreamed of by Adrianne Lobel, who helped create and produce the show as a tribute to the author, her father, who died in 1987.

Lobel is the set designer for the show and wife of Mark Linn-Baker who plays Toad. She claims to have inspired her father to write the "Frog and Toad" books after she discovered that he thought frogs and toads were the same thing and, at the age of 6, she was able to describe the differences between the two species.

In his books, the author made his anthropomorphic characters best friends, Frog the jauntier one and Toad the stodgier one according to their amphibian temperaments.

Jay Goede plays the charming Frog, who is used to taking command of their joint activities, such as baking cookies, planting flower seeds, sledding, kite-flying, swimming, picnicking, and celebrating Christmas. Linn-Baker as Toad is a hard-to-convince follower and a worrywart as befits an animal with plenty of warts. Frog does everything better than Toad, especially swimming, and Toad looks funny in swimming suits.

The gently satirical show has only the shadow of a plot and consists of a series of humorous episodes that are silly enough to please younger members of the audience and sophisticated enough to strike a chord with adults. Every activity described, including hibernation, has its own song written by two brothers, composer Robert Beale and librettist-lyricist Willie Beale, who have honed their talents in the theater and on television.

Some of the songs are quite lovely, such as "It's Spring," "He'll Never Know," and "Merry Almost Christmas." The score, played by a nine-member orchestra, ranges from jazzy to country-western and the lyrics from witty to wise. Fortunately for the mostly adult audience, there isn't a musical moment that event hints of condescension to pre-school tastes for nursery rhyme jingles.

The third lead character in the show is Snail, played by Frank Vlastnick (who also plays four other roles). The Beales poke musical fun at him for his slowness in a song titled "The Letter," which takes forever for him to deliver, and in another song titled "I'm Coming Out of My Shell." Other woodland characters include birds, a turtle, a mouse, a lizard, squirrels, moles, and a whole family of frogs.

Under the thoughtful direction of David Petrarca, the entire cast is careful to make these creatures lovable without resorting to being cutesy, as adults playing animals are wont to do. Goede and Linn-Baker are particularly adept at establishing believable characters for Frog and Toad, making them acceptable to older, more literal-minded audience members.

Martin Pakledinaz's drolly designed costumes follow the styles established by Lobel in his illustrations, as do Adrianne Lobel's enchanting sets depicting pond and forest and the cottages of Frog and Toad with their stylized furnishings. For the sharp-eyed viewer, there are many amusing allusions to nature's realities such as the camp roll on the back of Snail representing his shell and Toad's green stockings peaking out beneath his fashionable Edwardian suits

"A Year With Frog and Toad" provides a rich theatrical experience free of the usual bugaboos associated with stage works written for children. It is a reflection of the more provocative fare being offered at the New Victory in New York, the Children' Theater in Minneapolis, and on numerous other American stages that mount plays and musicals for young audiences. And about time, too!