Prøve GULL - Gratis
Stage review The songs shine in this scaled-up Sondheim
The Guardian
|May 30, 2025
The interval playlist includes Crazy Frog, which isn't by Stephen Sondheim. But his own springy numbers are the best reason to catch this rarely seen musical based on ancient Greek satire.
Aristophanes, writing at the fag end of a protracted war, conjures demigod Dionysos, accompanied by Xanthias, his slave ("though I prefer 'intern'"). He braves the underworld to reclaim a dead genius, picking Aeschylus over Euripides. The musical's Dionysos considers George Bernard Shaw, but eventually plumps for Shakespeare.
Originally staged at Yale in 1974 (Sondheim: "One of the few deeply unpleasant professional experiences I've had"), it was expanded for Broadway in 2004 (Sondheim: "It suffered from inflation"). The extended version takes a jape too far.
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