Esma Orgeron
July 2, 2007
NSU business college dean elected to state CPA board
July 4, 2007In these politically-correct times, one would expect that authors and lyricists would shy away from describing the plain-looking in blunt language, and instead use more tactful terms to transmit their ideas – “Ugly Betty” aside.
Writer and lyricist Anthony Drewe, and composer George Stiles, hedged their bets in 1993 when coming up with the title for their musical comedy, “Honk!,” which is based loosely on the famous 1844 Hans Christian Andersen fable, “The Ugly Duckling.”
“Honk!” was originally titled “The Ugly Duckling or the Aesthetically Challenged Farmyard Fowl.”
Drewe and Stiles shortened the title to “Honk!” in 1997 when a revised version of the play opened in 1997, no doubt partly because the original name contained nine words.
Still, the pair ditched political propriety and kept “Ugly” as the graphic name of the main character, the duckling.
(The fact that a domesticated hen in “Honk!” is named “Lowbutt” conjures pictures of a different graphic nature.)
LePetit Theatre de Terrebonne is presenting Drewe and Stiles’ “Honk!” as the first play of its 2007-08 season Thursday, July 12, to Sunday, July 15, Wednesday, July 18, to Sunday, July 22, and Wednesday, July 25, to Sunday, July 29, at LePetit’s downtown Houma theatre (7829 Main St.). All show times are at 7:30 p.m., except for the three 2 p.m. Sunday matinees.
Pat Crochet, who is a board member and instructor at the South Louisiana Center for the Arts in Houma, is directing LePetit’s “Honk!”
Ugly will be played by Eric Haydel, 24, a senior at Nicholls State, who is a member of the university’s acting troupe, the Nicholls Players.
“He’s supposed to be bigger than the others,” Crochet said. “I was looking for a teenager, but he looks young.”
Ugly’s foster parents, solicitous mom Ida and philandering dad Drake, are played by Nicholls State applied mathematics instructor Karen Smith, and Doug Holloway, respectively.
Smith, whom Crochet said “has a beautiful voice,” earned an undergraduate degree in musical performance.
Nearly all the 21 actors, which include four children and seven teenagers, in the production are appearing for the first time on a Le Petit staging.
Crochet said that the play is called “Honk!” not only because the main character is a swan, though he believes he is a duck, but because “honk” is yelled by Ugly and other characters at significant points in the production.
“When Ugly is hatched, the ducklings say ‘quack,’ but Ugly says ‘honk,'” Crochet said. “Later, he hears another swan saying ‘honk.’ It’s a turning point. He realizes he is not a duck.”
She said that, although “Honk!” is a comedy, “the line between musical and musical comedy has blurred. This is not a children’s show. Much of the humor will go over their heads. There are lots of jokes, but there is also a lot of pathos.”
Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” preached an obvious lesson about not judging people by their looks. The young swan is mocked by the ducks because of his different appearance.
(Young swans, or cygnets, are actually fairly handsome little fuzzballs, though some feel that ducklings are cuddlier. In his fable, Andersen did not explain how a swan’s egg ended up in a clutch of duck eggs.)
“The lesson in ‘Honk!’ is very much emphasized,” Crochet said, “though it’s not one that hits you over the head. Ugly is not accepted for what he is. He wants to get along.”
Much of the message in “Honk!” is conveyed in the words of the play’s over 20 songs, though several of the tunes are reprises. Le Petit is including all of the songs from the original British production, which won a 2000 Olivier Award-Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Award.
“The thread that runs through the songs is that you can’t judge people by what they look like,” Crochet said.
The opening number is the heartening “A Poultry Tale,” which introduces the animals.
Later, a bullfrog, accompanied by froglets and Ugly, sings about wanting to be liked in “Warts and All.”
“The tunes tell the story,” she said. “The real thought-provoking one is ‘Different.’ Some of the songs have the same theme. ‘It Takes All Sorts’ is about…diversity, but people are the same. That theme runs through the play.”
“In one song, they say about Ugly, ‘Look at him, he looks different.’ In the reprise, they say, ‘Look at him,’ because he’s now a swan.”
Crochet said that not only is the theme of “Honk!” directed toward adults, so is the costuming in the play.
The outfits will only suggest an animal’s appearance, mostly in a comical way.
Ugly, who is dressed like a nerd, looks for a pair of plaid pants. The ducklings will be clothed in yellow overalls, and orange boots. Some geese, who protect Ugly at one point, will wear airline pilot and flight attendant outfits.
Crochet got some of the costuming ideas from the Internet.
She said that the minimalist wardrobe makes the characters “more universal, to get away from the idea it’s a children’s show.
The British idioms in “Honk!” were not universal, however.
“A couple of times, we had to look up what the Britishisms were,” she said.
Constructing the birds’ eggs to be able to contain the actors also proved to be an obstacle for the play’s set designers, she said.
But Crochet is confident that the positive message in “Honk!” will be sent to the audience in her production.
As Andersen wrote in “The Ugly Duckling,” “To be born in a duck’s nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan’s egg.”
