Oi Frog & Friends! – Lyric Theatre

John Winchester and Simon Yadoo in Oi Frog & Friends! at the Lyric Theatre, London. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Oi Frog & Friends! continues at the Lyric Theatre, London until 5 January 2020.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

For those not already in the know, Oi Frog is a popular children’s book by Kes Gray and illustrated by Jim Field. There is also an Oi Cat and an Oi Dog apparently and all three well-loved characters appear in this show.

In the production Frog goes to a new school and finds that the rule is that an animal must sit on something that rhymes with their name. Frog must therefore sit on a log. Uncomfortable! Frog, supported by his loyal friend dog, challenges the status quo and takes over the rule book from the marvellous monitor cat, becoming temporarily rule and rhyme crazed until a solution is found.

According to the programme the script has been created by four people working together, Emma Earle, Zoe Squire, Luke Bateman and Ricky Hughes, who also respectively take on direction, design, music and lyrics. Impressive teamwork.

The show could have embodied some sort of interesting and relevant message simple enough for small children to engage with but this does not seem to be the focus or intention of the piece. It really is seemingly just learning about animals and playing with simple rhymes. Many children in the audience already knew the rhymes the performers wanted to hear, presumably from already knowing the books well.

There are some nice songs in the show and the four adept performers, Darren Seed, Lucy Tuck, John Winchester and Simon Yadoo make them work well.

This show is full of entertainments and music is just one of them. There are some marvellous puppets and costumes, especially the dog one, quite high production values generally, large inflatable balls for the front rows to play with, an elephant that sprays water and many other treats.

I didn’t get the impression afterwards, however, that the children around me were delighted to have seen this show or that anything about would stay with them and have meaning going forward, but they were certainly stimulated and entertained at the time.

Personally my favourite moment was when the charming dog likened friendship to rhyming words in that both start out from separate places but they end up together…

Clare Walters