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Wine time: The Frogs - Southwark Playhouse

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For a show called The Frogs, there isn’t much amphibian activity in the piece. But being a show with music by Stephen Sondheim, you could be mistaken for thinking it’s a critical theatrical piece. But like Sondheim’s final musical playing at the National Theatre, while it may not be a musical that fills you with provocative thoughts, it’s a fast-paced romp through hell and back to save the world for the sake of arts. With rousing choruses, thrilling choreography and plenty of cheap laughs, what more can you want from the theatre? It’s currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) . There isn’t much to the plot, except that Dionysus (Dan Buckley), disillusioned by the state of a divided world, and his sidekick and slave, Xanthias (Kevin McHale), cross the river Styx to the underworld to find a great writer who they can return to the world to teach the world about life. He has his mind set on bringing back George Bernard Shaw until he hears the poetry of Shakespeare.  This v...

We have ways of making you think: The Mosinee Project @newdiorama

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The revolution is partially re-enacted to scare the pants off an unsuspecting midwestern American town in The Mosinee Project. The piece, which was initially seen at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, is a retelling of the actual fake communist invasion of 1950s America, organised by ex-communists and funded by the American Legion. It's also an attempt to understand why a town would decide to stage a mock communist takeover, what it says about fear, and how it was a harbinger for a much darker period that would mark the Red Scares and witch hunts of the 1950s. It's currently playing at the New Diorama Theatre.

Writer-director Nikhil Vyas deconstructs this obscure historical event, exploring what drives fear and how the use of the media to generate attention can manipulate viewpoints while assembling various facts behind the planning and preparation of the day. This includes exploring the motivations behind two ex-communists—Joseph Zach Kornfeder and Benjamin Gitlow—brought in by the Legion to give it authenticity. Kornfeder was an interesting character, as he was trained in Moscow to create this type of disinformation. So you're left to wonder about his motivations. 

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It's a three-hander in which the cast moves between the characters and explains the action and what they are attempting to do to the audience. The production uses cameras, projections, and a simple table with a model of the town to map out the invasion and how it plays out on the actual day. As the story unfolds, you find yourself drawn into the event and how it's being told, so much so that you're bound to go down a rabbit hole of viewing historical newsreels and writings about the actual event. 

The day's events aimed to gain attention about communism and distilled it down to a fun pageant. But it was also the start of the Red Scare that would dominate the decade. The Russians had just detonated the bomb. Senator Joseph McCarthy gave his speech about the communists working in the State Department. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would be arrested for passing secrets of the bomb to the Russians. It's enough to make you think about how messaging can underscore events around us and make us believe in all sorts of incredible things. Although those who believe that sort of thing may not be seasoned London theatregoers, surely?

The Mosinee Project is written and directed by Nikhil Vyas, and continues at the New Diorama Theatre until 22 March. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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Photos by David Monteith-Hodge





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