Frog and Toad sing songs

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This article was published 06/12/2019 (2171 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is not unusual for shows in children’s theatre to have music. But it is still relatively rare for a kid-targeted show to be a full-blown musical, as opposed to a play with music.

That’s a distinction worth noting about A Year with Frog and Toad, the rambunctious seasonal offering from Manitoba Theatre for Young People. Centred on the quirky friendship between Frog (Matthew Armet) and Toad (Katie German), it was a Tony Award-nominated Broadway adaptation of a children’s book, one of a series written throughout the 1970s by Arnold Lobel.

In that original production and subsequent iterations, the roles of Frog and Toad have been played by men. In this show, the role of Toad is being played by local musical vet German (Pippin, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do).

“It’s reimagined for that role,” the effervescent German says. “It’s been really fun. Paula (music director Paula Potosky) has been helping me find the ranges for singing.

“The people who hold the rights for Frog and Toad were really excited to have a female Toad and a male Frog,” German says.

Armet, a Winnipeg transplant originally from North Battleford, Sask., says it adds its own message.

“Usually, when you see two men play Frog and Toad, you don’t think there’s a romantic connection at all,” he says.

“But for some reason, in musicals nowadays, the second you see a man and woman, you immediately assume there’s a romantic relationship,” Armet says. “But there’s something really special, especially in a family kids’ show, of showing a friendship between a man and a woman that is not romantic at all.

“It’s just being best friends and enjoying each other’s company as friends.”

In fact, the topic of Frog and Toad’s close friendship turns out to be a loaded one. Lobel was married with kids in the first half of the ’70s. But by the decade’s end, he had come out as gay. His artist daughter, Adrienne Lobel, who designed the set for the first theatrical production of A Year with Frog and Toad, suggested to the New Yorker magazine that the friendship between the two characters was, on one level, a celebration of same-sex relationships. (Arnold Lobel died in 1987, an early victim of that decade’s AIDS crisis.)

Now, as then, the musical remains a kind of song-filled calendar marking the delights and challenges of friendship.

“I just love the story,” German says. “I think it’s universal. It’s a story about figuring out each other’s differences and similarities and how people work together with all those differences.

“I just think that’s fun,” she says. “And I have a four-year-old, and I’m really excited for him to see this. He knows all of my parts.”

Having a kid is not unlike working with a director, German adds.

“He’s very honest, so when I’m practising things at home, he’ll tell me if it’s good or if it’s bad or if he doesn’t like it,” she says. “Sometimes I ask: is this going to get past Felix?”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing