By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
“Oh, the Places You’ll Go” promises the title one of Dr. Seuss’s books.
That promise is fulfilled in “Seussical” where Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty take the audience far and wide in the world created by the good ‘doctor” Theodor Geisel.
We go to the jungle of Nool, and Whoville, and the mystical land of Solla Sollew. But all the weird and wonderful characters we meet there, all bear a striking, and uncomfortable resemblance, to folks we know (and maybe are).
The Waterville Playshop is staging “Seussical: The Musical” tonight (Friday, April 26), and Saturday (April 27) at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2:30 at the Maumee Indoor Theater on Conant Street, directed by Kelly Frailly with music direction by Aaron Roos and choreography by Riley Runnells. Click for tickets.
Our guides to this world are one of Seuss’s most famous creations The Cat in the Hat (Brock Burkett) and JoJo , who makes a single, though crucial, appearance in “Horton Hears a Who.”
We meet the boy in his room as he wakes to find a strange hat peeking up, and then finds there’s a cat wearing it.
The Cat in the Hat declares he likes the kid because he thinks in his own way. This imaginary wanderlust is encouraged by the Cat in “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!” The Cat is an amoral agent of misrule. Burkett plays the character with near maniacal joy, amping up the lunacy as the show goes on.
The Cat urges the boy to dream of the faraway jungle of Nool where we meet the musical’s third protagonist, Horton the sensitive and thoughtful elephant (Kyle Moninger). Horton has discovered a clover and, on the clover, exists the tiny world of the Who. The Cat projects the boy into the world as JoJo, the son of the Mayor of Whoville (Alec Simon) and Mrs. Mayor (Beth Giller). All his thinking and daydreaming frustrates them because of the troubles that leads in school and at home.
Anna Giller plays JoJo as a charismatic dreamer, whose imagination is at odds with the world.Sent up to take a bath, JoJo imagines all that’s possible in McElligot’s Pool, and lets the water run and flood the house.
It’s not like the inhabitants of Whoville don’t have larger problems to tend to. Their microscopic world wafts about through the much larger world. They are threatened by war and environmental threats. They ask Horton, who is the only creature who can hear them, to protect them. The goodhearted elephant agrees – he is a very agreeable sort.
Horton is mocked by those around him – the Sour Kangaroo (Rose Roberts-Karnes) and the Young Kangaroo (Paige Burgess).
Horton protects the clover because: “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
Horton in beset by a rousing chorus of critics declaring he’s the biggest fool in Nool. To compound his problems, he later agrees to tend to the show bird Mayzie’s egg while she takes a short break. For Mayzie (Courtney Austin) that means relocating to Palm Beach. Moninger balances Horton’s sweetness with moral resolve. He makes promises because he’s so helpful; he keeps them no matter how difficult that is. He’s a softie with a spine of steel.
We also meet Gertrude McFuzz (Mikayla Trimpey), a ukulele-playing bird who has a crush on Horton, But she fears her tail feather is too small to attract an elephant. It’s nothing like plumage of “Amayzing Mayzie.”
After being directed to the “Pill-berry” bush, Gertrude grows that longer tail, but that means she can’t fly and can’t follow Horton on his picaresque adventures. With her feathers reduced to their natural length, she is finally able to go to Horton’s rescue.
Then there’s Thing 1 (Alexis Deffenbaugh) and Thing 2 (Jared Masserant), expressive imps who bounce around comically punctuating the action.
In order to straighten JoJo out – to make a man of him as they said back in my day – he is enlisted in the cadets led by General Gengus Khan Schmitz (Matt Badyna). He is preparing them for the coming war between the good people who butter their bread butter side up, and the bad ones who butter their bread, butter side down. JoJo, after rebelling against the futility of war, turns out to be a true hero.
While there are dark moments, the musical bounces along to a happy ending with the egg hatched and the folks of Whoville safe, if not entirely sound.
