Frog and Toad a Ribbiting Performance

After 10 years as Marco Island Academy’s performing arts instructor, Chris Dayett has pulled off perhaps his finest performance. All the stars aligned Friday night, April 17, for the opening night of Arnold Lobel’s A Year With Frog and Toad at the Rhine Theater in the MIA gymnasium.

"I'm so, so proud of this cast,” Dayett said after seeing his students perform. "I mean, we have come a long way. We have a lot of students who are new to theater or new to musical theater. And this was a perfect show for them to kind of learn a couple steps and then to make it their own. I'm just really proud with where we have come, how they have grown, going from not really knowing much about theater or not much about musical theater to what you saw tonight.”

Friday’s performance truly had it all: strong performances from the leads, solid singing and dancing, and a secondary performer who stole the show.

Samuel “Sammy” Zocco and Joaquin Perez did a great job as best friends, Frog and Toad. It undoubtedly helps that the two are best friends off stage, too. And if the ensemble had stage fright, it was nowhere to be found Friday night as everyone appeared to deliver their lines flawlessly. And sure enough, Snail, played by Ian Zarate, stole the show as he “came out of his shell” to deliver a heartwarming performance.

The audience showered the performers with applause and laughter throughout the performance. The audience also appreciated that the folks at MIA have figured out the intricacies of their outstanding sound system. In the past, the performers’ voices were often hard to understand. Friday night the sound from the actors to the music, to the special effects, couldn’t have been better.

"It's just a setting that we were supposed to have five years ago, but we never did,” Dayett said. "And you know, it takes five years to get things to happen, but they came out and they now have the sound coming out of the top speaker. So we're able to put specific sounds through certain speakers. The music's coming out of here, the vocals are coming out of the front, and then we have both coming out of the side speakers, which are the kids' monitors.”

The outstanding performance was noted by Hyla Crane, executive director of the Marco Island Center for the Arts, who attended opening night.

"It's so exciting to see the full version of this production done by Chris Dayett here at Marco Island Academy,” Crane said. "Back in our first year at the Art Center Theater, during our summer program, we did Frog and Toad kids' version, so we've seen a preview of this with younger children. And it's just marvelous to see what a really fantastic production it is. Anything is wonderful when it's about friendship."

Dayett feels the bar has been raised at MIA.

"I remember at the end of Torch someone said, 'So how are you going to top this?' But these kids just raised the bar to the next level. So I feel like the bar is even higher. I think it's the best one ever."

A Year With Frog and Toad runs April 18 and 24 at 7:00 PM and April 25 at 2:00 PM. Purchase tickets at MIATheatre.com.