Yellow Pages
“Honk!” certainly has enough colorful animal outfits, songs and themes of tolerance to be appealing — as well as morally beneficial — for young children.
But underneath the P.C. message there’s also a sense of slyness and subversive fun that makes the play feel a bit naughty, and there’s enough humor to keep the adults laughing too.
Anacortes Community Theatre’s annual holiday family production, directed by Cally Johnson, is a hilarious but moving musical comedy based on Hans Christian Anderson’s classic fable “The Ugly Duckling.”
Ugly, played by the fresh-faced and likable Alex Hollingsworth, is the odd duckling who burst from a gigantic egg — could he actually be a turkey? His odd, gawky looks incite disdain from his neighbors, siblings and even his father.
His mother, Ida (Eal Lundquist) is startled at first, but quickly bonds with her sweet but clearly different son. Although her heart’s in the right place, Ida is mostly ineffectual while the other ducklings bully and ostracize Ugly.
“Look at him,” they sing and point. Perhaps it would be better if he’d never hatched, they cruelly suggest.
“Honk!” sharpens up considerably when the dastardly Cat, played by the delightful Tim Brown, slinks into the scene and sizes up the situation. He knows an easy poultry lunch when he sees one.
This is Brown’s most villainous role since Judas in “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” but his Cat is loveably awful. After all, he’s just being true to his feline nature. It’s a joy hearing Cat sing of the delights of scratching antique furniture, digging up freshly planted flower beds and — as he anticipates a meal of tender duck a l’orange — playing with his food before eating it.
While Ida is distracted, Ugly wanders off with his new “friend,” who offers to show him around the barnyard.
Thus begins a journey of discovery for the hatchling, who gets lucky and gets lost. He meets a host of oddball characters as he searches not only for a way home, but also love and acceptance. Eventually, of course, his inner beauty becomes obvious to all.
Jan Trumble’s makeup design is minimal — no frog paint — and actors wear colorful, clever outfits by Sandy Meissner and Julia Locke that simply suggest various barnyard birds with well-placed feathers, scarves, collars and decorations. Without masks or animal costumes, the actors’ characterizations are all the more humorous.
The cast of “Honk!” is big and happy, with many individuals playing multiple characters: Marilyn Pinquoch, Rebecca Launius, Dan Tibbles, Jan Trumble, Morghan Vance, Carol Lee Olsen, Rachel Griffin, Nat Jenkins, Elliott Hofferth, Aliya Zaheer, Mike Jenkins, Clarence Holden, Judy Crane, Regina Zaheer and Daniel Brown.
Pinquoch also serves as musical director and Launius as stage manager and choreographer. The producer is Carol Lee Olsen. The bright, cheerful barnyard set was designed and built by Bud Anderson with set artists Cheryl Reid and Anneke DenHaan.
Family musical ‘Honk!’ opens at ACT
“Honk!,” a musical comedy by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, opens Friday and continues through Dec. 19 at Anacortes Community Theatre.
Tickets are $16. Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays Nov. 29 and Dec. 6 and 13. For more information, contact the box office at 293-6829.
