The keynotes of the time are chaos, greed and corruption; drama is dying. Cultural commentators lamenting the state of theatre over past weeks? Yes, but also the setting for The Frogs, first produced in 405BC. Aristophanes’s play has the quality of an oxymoron: its subject is literary criticism and yet it is considered to be one of the greatest comedies of all time. This collision of seeming opposites is one of the things that make it a neat fit for theatre company Spymonkey, whose previous clown-theatre style productions have included the tragedy/blockbuster mashup Oedipussy, and a hilarious, breakneck romp through all the deaths in Shakespeare’s plays (The Complete Deaths). Here, they bring the ancient comedy to life by mocking it for not being “in the now”.
The great tragedian Euripides has died. Dionysus, god of drama, despairing of new writing, decides to go to Hades to bring him back to life. He takes with him his slave, Xanthias. The characters are a classic comic double act (played by Toby Park and Aitor Basauri – crucially, for the contemporary plot, just two of Spymonkey’s four long-term performers). Along the way they encounter a range of gods, monsters and other creatures (all variously embodied by company newbie Jacoba Williams, in Lucy Bradridge’s delirious costumes), as well as the titular frogs (an energetically tap-dancing community chorus).
Writer Carl Grose follows the structure of the original while cracking open spaces between scenes to reveal a present-day hinterland to the production. This is a crazy backstory, combining an improbable fiction and a true-life tragedy (one that mirrors Dionysus’s quest). An awful lot is going on here: sometimes, too much; at others, the action sags or feels forced. That said, under director Joyce Henderson, the juggling of broad comedy with genuine emotion is almost as engaging as it is audacious, and the actors’ skilfully calibrated “overacting” real fun to watch.
• The Frogs is at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, until 3 February; and at the Kiln, London, 8 February to 2 March
