A Year with Frog and Toad, musical for families, SummerStock Austin at the Rollins Theatre, weekends July 23 - August 7

by Michael Meigs

I got up and cheered for the curtain call of A Year with Frog and Toad, and I happily accepted the invitation from director Michael McKelvey for audience members to mingle with the cast onstage afterwards. This musical was so appealing and well executed that it lured me out of the comfortable semi-anonymity of the audience to let these performers know how much I appreciated them. And, incidentally, to inquire whether we would be seeing them on Austin stages anytime soon.

Michael McKelvey might well have stood up and cheered at audition time for this show, when he saw the two principals Zach Dailey and Ryan Borses do their stuff for the first time. Not only could they sing, dance and dialogue with the best of them, but they were the perfect somatypes for the two amphibian friends who since the 1970's have been entertaining us and luring youngsters into the adventure of reading. Zach as Frog is a broad-shouldered, rounded and thoughtful endomorph, and Ryan as Toad is the slim and energetic ectomorph, as lively as an animated Etch-A-Sketch character. It's a classic comic contrast. It works as well in Lobel's books and in this singing, dancing charmer as it did with Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: A Year with Frog and Toad, SummerStock Austin, July 23 - August 7

Click for ALT review (Highly recommended!)

From information received directly:

presents

A Year with Frog and Toad

a musical adaptation of Arnold Lobel's classic picture story

10 a.m., Saturdays and Sundays, July 23-24, July 30-31, August 6-7

and 10 a.m. on Thursday, August 4

Rollins Theatre, Long Center, 701 Riverside at South First

Click for ticket information

From the show description at www.stjohns.edu:

Arnold Lobel's well-loved characters hop from the page to the stage in Robert and Willie Reale's musical A Year With Frog And Toad. Conceived by Mr. Lobel's daughter, Adrianne Lobel, A Year With Frog And Toad remains true to the spirit of the original stories as it follows two great friends, the cheerful and popular Frog and the rather grumpy Toad through four fun-filled seasons. Waking from hibernation in the spring, they proceed to plant gardens, swim, rake leaves and go sledding, learning life lessons along the way, including a most important one about friendship and rejoicing in the attributes that make each of us different and special.