A Year with Frog and Toad

Chase experienced his first theatrical performance on Saturday. My Mom and I took Chase to the children's theatre attached to the Des Moines Playhouse. "A Year with Frog and Toad" just opened last Friday. It was a musical based on the children's book about Frog and Toad. When I decided to get tickets, I went to Amazon and ordered the book. I wanted Chase to be familiar with the characters and storyline.

When the play first started, Chase didn't understand why Frog and Toad didn't have costumes on. Once we got past that, he did pretty well. He followed the storyline quite well. A couple of times it was hard for him to understand certain scenes. One was when the snail was delivering a letter to Toad. Well, as you know snails are really slow, and in this story, it took the snail a whole year to deliver the letter. Several times Snail would come on stage and go right past the mailbox for Toad. Chase would say, "Why isn't he putting the letter in the mailbox?" The last scene before intermissions was about Frog and Toad baking and eating cookies. It was really cute and fun. Then we went out to the lobby and they were selling big chocolate chip cookies. Chase thought that was great.

The play was an hour and a half, and Chase started getting antsy the last 10 minutes, but we got through it. As soon as it was over Chase says, "Can we see this again tomorrow?" I told him we wouldn't get too, but we can go home and pretend to be Frog and Toad. So we got home and Mom took Chase outside to play. Chase wanted to rake the leaves just like Frog and Toad. I was excited, because some raking got done! I was reading the program, and it said that most children's play are recommended for 5 or older. Oh well, it is never too early to start exposing the kids to the performing arts. Chase said he really liked it. I am glad we made the effort to go.