As Suanie Sees It

Yesterday we had the opportunity to watch FROGWAY at The Actors Studio in Bangsar on its opening night. Frogway is a jazzy, groovy made-in-Malaysia musical, written by Marcel Nunis and composed by Michael Veerapen, and it was first staged nearly 30 years ago in 1980! The current re-staging is directed by Harith Iskander, and features Vince (of Akademi Fantasia fame), Ash Nair (of Malaysian Idol fame), Harith Iskander, Elaine Daly, Chelsia Ng, Ina Fabregas, Marielle Fabregas and Thor Kah Hoong.

A synopsis of the show:

Eddy, a singing frog, is rejected by his pond community because frogs aren’t supposed to sing! He leaves the pond, and the love of his life, to seek his fame and fortune downriver at the Swamp. Here Eddy’s singing talent propels him to stardom with the help of two cunning agents, a Snake and a Stork. He reaches the top of the entertainment world when he gets to perform on ‘Frogway’.

But fame, fortune and riotous living take their toll on our star. Blinded by pride and rejection, he turns to the dark side and dumps his best friend Freddy the Toad. To his horror, Eddy stumbles upon a dastardly plot by his agents to rob him of his fortune before killing and EATING him.

Will melon seeds save the day? Will Eddy be reunited with the love of his life? Find out this August, in FROGWAY!

In a nutshell, we had FUN! We were thoroughly entertained by the simple yet heart-warming plot, and many parts tickled our funny bones. Vince (whom I think resembles Seann William Scott) performed well, and the dude really can sing, and sing well at that! I thought he was really good in it. Maybe he should remain a singing frog

Ash Nair as Freddy the Toad, seemed to have a great on-stage chemistry with Vince. Which is a good thing, since he played best friend to Vince’s character, Eddy the Frog. Thor reprises his role as the grumpy father (Sepet, Gubra, The Homecoming). He didn’t sing but he looked really grumpy Ina Fabregas who was Helen the Longkang Fish and love of Eddy’s life sounded good. I loved her costume as well! Every time she came on, I thought her arms would drop from too much waving. Fish mah…

Marielle Fabregas (only 14-years old!!) was a lovely Frogette. Chelsia Ng as Shirley the Frogette was really, REALLY cute. Don’t want to spoil it for you, but her performance was really funny. The couple sitting next to me LOL-ed so hard every time Chelsia was on stage. I wished her voice was stronger though; the background music (by real-time musicians) kinda drowned her singing voice out.

Harith Iskander played Smiley the Snake. Indeed, he looked like a snake who just ate a big ass rabbit, lmao! Dude can move though Elaine Daly didn’t sing (I am not sure if she could anyway), but she played her role as Suzanne ‘Ditsy’ Stork BRILLIANTLY! Her facial expressions were spot on.

Well, what else is there to say? The songs were fun, the costumes were fun, everything was so entertaining, and I thoroughly recommend that you go catch FROGWAY!

Links:
- Official Frogway site
- Frogway blog
- Ticketing info
- Show info

p/s: Thanks to TV Smith for the tickets.

Other reviews: Pokku, tgsherilamirah, Aziya, Kim