My favorite part of Second Story Repertory’s gentle musical, A Year with Frog and Toad, was the snail. In round glasses, with antenna on his head and a fabric shell on his back, Snail propels a red scooter sloooowly across the stage, singing about how he’s rushing to deliver a letter from Frog to Toad. His mission is a running gag throughout the 50-minute performance. About six months after it’s posted, he is proud as punch to deliver the letter.
My 4-year-old friend Taylor was most interested in the perky little mouse with ears sticking out of her bonnet and a long tail. “How does the tail get on her?” Taylor whispered. “How does she make it move?” I told her that the tail is sewed onto her clothes and moved when she wiggles her bottom. After the play, the actress meeting the children in the lobby said, “I’m a mouse. I was born with it; it moves when I move.”
Some of the incidents are taken right out of Arnold Lobel’s beloved book, Frog and Toad All Year – including the bit when scared Toad ends up taking a snowy hill by himself after Frog is bumped off the sled, and the autumn story when Frog and Toad surreptitiously rake each other’s leaves as a surprise. In the book, a wind blows all the leaves back over the grass; in the play, two mischievous squirrels delight in throwing the leaves all around.
Most of the actors playing animals are cleverly accented with wings, tails or shells over their street clothes. Frog and Toad, however, are middle-aged men, one dressed in green pajamas or street clothes, the other dressed in brown and orange. Taylor had expected them to be more disguised. Nevertheless, they were charming and sweet in playing out their friendship through the seasons of a year. The whimsical stories are interspersed with catchy songs, including “We Fly South for the Winter” and “Toad Looks Funny in a Bathing Suit.”
Unlike previous Second Story Rep and other local children’s plays, A Year with Frog and Toad doesn’t have opportunities for audience interaction, and so I think the children were a little less engaged.
This play is ideal for children ages 3 to 6, and they are able to sit on the carpet right by the stage or on the seats above – or continually alternate between the two, as Taylor did.
