It’s so easy being green for Frog and Toad performers

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This article was published 06/12/2024 (280 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“I had a dream about a frog last night,” Jennifer Lyon says, not a lily pad in sight.

The actor’s ribbitting bedtime story might have been inspired by winter’s first snowfall, which may have led her to flip her calendar eight months ahead to an afternoon on the shores of Delta Beach, where as a child she built sandcastle hotels for amphibian guests.

A less fanciful explanation might be that for her latest role at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Lyon is playing Toad, one green half of Frog and Toad, the delightful croak monsieurs introduced to the reading public in 1970 by American writer-illustrator Arnold Lobel, a Newberry-winning inventor of humane animal characters.

“I don’t necessarily remember what happens in my dreams, but I do remember the feelings,” says Lyon, who when pressed recalls that in her somnolent state, a friendly bullfrog emerged from a garden hedge to greet her.

“You do garden in the show,” Jayden Fraser points out.

Fraser is a classical baritone studying voice at the University of Manitoba, where he primarily focuses on opera. Playing Frog in A Year With Frog and Toad, the 21-year-old graduate of Collège Jean Sauvé leaps into his first professional stage role, starring opposite Lyon, who made her MTYP debut in 1991’s Two Weeks, Twice a Year.

When he walked into the room to audition for co-directors Pablo Felices-Luna and Sara Topham, Fraser — whose phone case is decorated by a Pokemon card, a sticker of Franz Schubert and a ferris wheel of Taylor Swift lyrics — was entering new territory. A pandemic-raised performer, it was his first non-Zoom professional audition.

“I knew only one person in the room — the pianist,” he says.

But Fraser did already know an experienced Frog: a university friend played the role in a production in Edmonton and introduced Fraser to the music and lyrics, composed by Robert Reale and Willie Reale at the behest of Lobel’s daughter for a musical adaptation in 2000. The show premièred 13 years after Lobel’s death on Dec. 4, 1987 from AIDS; the Caldecott Medal-winner and author of nearly 100 books was 54.

Sitting in the audition hall was Lyon, who had been cast earlier in the year. The scene was one that made apparent that beneath the silliness at the surface of Lobel’s Waldenesque, Audenesque fables of friendship there beat a warm-blooded heart. In a classic tale from Lobel, Alone, Frog is perfectly content in his own company, which alleviates the well-intentioned concern of his best friend.

“The show is a lot of eating cookies and sledding, but that scene is a moment of real calm, and the connection between the two friends is really highlighted,” says Fraser, who before he even spoke a word had already impressed his scene partner.

“Within 20 seconds of his audition, we knew that he was the one. He just looked right into my eyes, and the chemistry that’s so elusive you can’t manufacture it, it was just there. Pow,” says Lyon, the daughter of late Manitoba premier — and Free Press reporter — Sterling Lyon.

Lyon says she knew Fraser was perfect, from the way he approached the role to the sensitivity he delivered.

”Sometimes, you don’t know what you’re looking for until it shows up, and he just showed up. As a human being — pretend you’re not listening, Jayden — Jayden is kind, open and warm, and I gravitated to that so much,” she says. “There’s really no difference onstage to offstage. Frog is Jayden. He is all of those beautiful things.”

The green-sneakered Fraser’s cheeks turn bright red.

“I think a lot of things between us are similar,” he says, referring to his stage persona as Frog. “He sometimes has a more relentless positivity than I can muster, but that energy is always where I start from. Frog is someone ready for new adventures, to take a risk, to go sledding down a hill at top speeds, going over jumps while dodging rocks.”

There’s nothing traditionally froggy or toady about the roles they play, says Lyon. On stage, the actors don’t ribbit much, if it all, nor do they sport a prosthetic sheen of warts, mucousy slime and green face paint.

“It’s all very human,” she says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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