News ‘Frogs’ at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre 13.02.2025

On Wednesday evening, 23 classicists in Year 10 to the Upper Sixth headed to the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre to watch a modernised version of Aristophanes’ classic comedy Frogs, performed by UCL students.

This was a lively and bawdy introduction to ancient Greek comedy for many, while for the A Level Classical Civilisation pupils it was a wonderful opportunity to see one of their set texts performed on stage. The play was written in 405 BC when Athens, about to lose the Peloponnesian War and culturally starving after its last great playwright, Euripides, had died the previous year, sends down Dionysus, the God of Theatre, and his not-so-trusted slave sidekick, Xanthias, to bring back one of its great playwrights from the Underworld. On their way they meet strange monsters, inflation-induced travel costs across the river Styx, grumpy locals, and of course the frogs of the title. In the end, it is Aeschylus who is allowed to return to the land of the living.

This was a wonderful and lively performance to a captive audience largely made up of school pupils, and our girls returned home at the end of the evening both culturally enlightened and recovering from stitches of laughter.