Frog Hops, Yanks Croak

Hard to tell who gets a bigger kick out of A Year With Frog and Toad—the kiddos in the seats at Dallas Children's Theater or the big people who bring them. There's something wonderful about a musical that so successfully entertains the inner child and fascinates the little one gazing wide-eyed at the stage, toy turtle clutched firmly in tiny hand.

Nominated for three Tonys for its Broadway run in 2003, the two-act adaptation of popular children's books by Arnold Lobel features a lovely 16-song score by Robert and Willie Reale. Each lyric and melody is seeded with the sophisticated influences of Sondheim, Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The book, also by Willie Reale, weaves several of Lobel's stories together with unifying themes of friendship, forgiveness and overcoming fear.

Even with its small cast of five, three of whom play multiple species of woodland creature, Frog and Toad is an enormous show. The DCT production directed by Cheryl K. Denson might be the most lavishly designed, visually stunning piece of theater produced in Dallas so far this year. From the meticulously hand-built feather hats on the bird ladies (Arianna Movassagh, Beth Albright) to the special effect of a turtle (Albright again) doing an underwater swim ballet, every element on the big stage in the Baker Theater has that first-class, Broadway-quality polish.

Designer Randel Wright, now employed full-time by DCT, doesn't just put up scenery; he makes the stage into a fluid, glowing, three-dimensional piece of art. For this one he's created spectacular revolving houses for each of the title characters, plus a magical bed of flowers that suddenly pop into blooms, a watery pool that turns to ice in winter and a yellow-eyed "large and terrible frog" looming two stories high over the stage (it even jumps rope!). Linda Blase's lighting complements all of it perfectly.

The loveliest thing about this show, however, is that it doesn't devolve into a syrupy smile-fest. It isn't easy being green or brown (with warts) in this slough of da pond. "Ten o'clock is my sad time of day," moans Toad (played by Brian Hathaway). He's a morose thing in natty tweeds and spats (designed by Barbara C. Cox), depressed because he never gets any mail. Best friend Frog (Bob Hess) does what any pal would do; he writes Toad a letter and hands it to Snail (Darius-Anthony Robinson) for delivery. The running joke then becomes how slowly snail-mail travels. When, at the end of the second act, Toad finally receives the envelope, it's a triumph for him and the messenger. Snail feels such a sense of accomplishment he takes center stage to belt "I'm Coming Out of My Shell."

The singing and dancing are dandy, but the best moments in A Year With Frog and Toad are the cool conversations between cold-blooded critters. "What do you want to do today?" Frog asks Toad, who answers "I don't know. What do you want to do?" Back and forth they go, just two little guys, a bit ugly, a lot lonely, reaching out to each other for company. It's like a kindergarten Marty. Children's theater written by lily-Paddy Chayefsky.

Garland Summer Musicals' production of Damn Yankees would be a lot more fun if it didn't feel like a double-header. The first act alone runs close to two hours, with a badly needed seventh-inning stretch coming when other shows are taking curtain calls. By the time the second act rounds the bases for the last time at 11 p.m., the musical about a baseball fan selling his soul to the devil has qualified for its own sweaty little bleacher in theater hell.

Damn Yankees shouldn't be such a slog. (The movie's a full hour shorter.) The show is full of juicy tunes—"Whatever Lola Wants," "(You Gotta Have) Heart," "Two Lost Souls"—that nudge the story along the way songs should in a good musical. A Broadway smash in the mid-1950s, Damn Yankees has enjoyed plenty of revivals, notably on Broadway again in 1994 with an active assist from its original writer-director, George Abbott. He was 106 at the time. He died the following year.

The Garland production directed by Buff Shurr has drafted some strong local performers for the leads. As Joe Hardy, the frustrated baseball nut who makes his Faustian deal to bat one winning season for the Washington Senators, handsome Joshua Doss looks like a jock and sings like an angel. Doss is a comer on the Dallas musical theater scene, with recent starring credits at Lyric Stage and Uptown Players. His nemesis in Yankees, the devil-may-care (and he does) Mr. Applegate, is played by John Garcia, a likable supporting actor. He takes this character into some broadly camp directions, but at least when Garcia is onstage, mugging like Danny DeVito with more hair, there are plenty of laughs.

For a musical comedy, this Damn Yankees is damn short on the funniness. Maybe it's the Granville Arts Center's lousy acoustics, which turn most of the dialogue into a muddle of echoes and murmurs; maybe it's that the slow, maudlin book scenes between Joe and Meg (Jenay Puckett), the dowdy wife he abandons to play ball, seem slower and maudlin-er than ever.