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.