Honk! The Ugly Duckling

Synopsis

Spring has come to the duckyard. Drake, the Mallard Duck, and his long suffering partner, Ida, await the birth of a new brood, but the nest seems to contain one inordinately large egg this year. Sure enough, it cracks open to reveal an ugly chick nothing like his siblings, who makes a strange honk sound instead of the expected quack! Ida warms to him, though, and takes him out for the first swim on the lake, finding him to be a prodigious swimmer. The other farmyard fowl, however ridicule him, driving him into the eager arms of Tom Cat. Ugly escapes by the skin of his teeth, but with night falling he becomes lost... Winner of 2000 Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

Our Review:

17 December 2007

Honk!, the magical musical take on the story of the ugly duckling by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, returns triumphantly to the home of its first production in 1993, boasting the same talented team of director Steven Dexter and designer Francis O'Connor.

It’s hard to imagine a show more perfectly designed to appeal to audience members as young as six, while still giving the grown ups a great time too. And it’s hard to imagine a production more perfectly designed to bring the show to ‘eggciting’ (yes, this ‘poultry tale’ has a ‘pun’ishing script!) life.

O’Connor’s brightly-coloured set is a small miracle. The audience sit on three sides of an oval farmyard, the duck pond brilliantly evoked by a ball pit full of blue and white balls that get satisfyingly chucked in and out of the audience to general delight as the ducklings learn to swim. The hutch full of eggs doubles as keyboards, some of the flowers are microphones and others, muppet-like, ...

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