Iola High School’s “Honk, Jr.” is dedicated to the kids picked last for a football game, the ones who bring weird foods for lunch, the teenagers who lose sight of who they are as they seek to be like everyone else.
The oddballs. The sore thumbs. Those too cool to walk next to Mom at Walmart. To them, the production sends a single, resounding message: You’re all beautiful just as you are.
“Honk, Jr.” is a musical adaptation of “The Ugly Duckling,” the beloved fable written by Hans Christian Andersen. Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13 and Friday, Nov. 14 at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
Don’t miss it. The IHS students deliver an emphatic affirmation that it’s more than just okay to be different. As Ugly, portrayed by Logan Belknap, says, “Different isn’t scary, different is no threat.”
Belknap, a freshman, offers a dazzling interpretation of the ugly duckling. His steady command of the stage and strong vocals quickly create a character we care deeply about. And while the overarching plotline is familiar to all — a cygnet born into a family of ducks, who is then cast out only to eventually find his place — how exactly this drama unfolds is never dull, nor predictable.
In large part, that’s due to an excellent cast. Ugly’s mother, Ida, played by Taegan Noyes, anchors the musical with a sensational performance. Her love for Ugly is only equalled by her disgust with Drake, her deadbeat husband, who rejects Ugly because he “has a reputation to uphold.”
Drake, played by Ben Heiman, and Ida’s four ducklings, are bullies. Their spiteful mocking of Ugly reminds us of those who, dressed in the uniform of conformity, disdain anything different. In today’s America, which seems to have turned “diversity” into a dirty word, Drake is the father who, in his heart of hearts, is simply scared of Ugly. “He’s not one of us,” he protests.
Ida’s response? Dad is nothing more than a “dumbpluck.” “Hold your head up high,” she tells Ugly. True beauty is on the inside.
In this retelling of The Ugly Duckling, Ugly isn’t kicked off the farm; he gets lost. A villainous cat, played by the entertaining Sarah Ross, revels in her ever-morphing plans to devour Ugly for lunch. Ugly escapes by the slimmest of margins.
SO BEGINS the long journey of Ugly as he seeks to find somewhere to belong. Along the way, Greylag, a military-style goose, played by Jeffrey Ashworth, and his squadron help Ugly escape Cat a second time, only to later meet their demise in an example of sacrifice that impacts the young swan.
But Ugly learns a more powerful lesson, accentuated only because of its humor, when he runs across a bullfrog. (Or rather, the bullfrog runs into him.) Stephanie Fees hits every note portraying a self-deprecating bullfrog who begins to teach Ugly how to accept himself, “warts and all.”
“Excuse me, I have a human in my throat,” Bullfrog says, coughing amidst the laughs as he insists Ugly stay warm, cheerful and hopeful. “Someone’s gonna love you,” he promises.
LOVE indeed comes Ugly’s way. You’ll have to see the show to discover how. It’s one of the many surprises this outstanding performance offers. There are plenty of twists and turns, but the climax is indisputably when Ida, who left home to search for her lost son, finally finds him alive, half-frozen under a pile of snow.
Ugly emerges as a young swan, graceful and strong, aware finally of the potential buried within him all along.
“He was different,” sings Ida. “He wasn’t mine to mother,” as she watches him fly away, a sweet melancholy in her eyes.
That Ugly returns home, that he always sees Ida as his mother — “I don’t care whose egg I came out of” — is a testament to the type of love that, as the good book says, “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
