Review: HONK!, Union Theatre

When Honk! won the 2000 Olivier Award for best musical, beating Mamma Mia! and The Lion King, it might have given someone at Disney the idea to adapt another Hans Christian Andersen story into a musical, The Snow Queen becoming Frozen. While the billions of dollars have rolled in for those mega-hits, Honk! has found a home in schools and youth productions, so it's splendid to see the Union Theatre doing what the Union Theatre does so well, in reviving a somewhat forgotten show, bringing it to a new generation.

We're in a farmyard where Ida (Geddit? And if you don't, there's an awful lot more of that kind of stuff, so you will) is hatching an unusual brood. Three yellow, fluffy ducklings emerge but, eventually, they are joined by a big chick whose feathers are indeed stubby and brown and who is told to get out of town. Ida, despite even her dissolute husband, Drake, joining in the bullying of Ugly, loves her freaky chick, but when she is distracted by a French bread treat, Ugly is drawn away by a duplicitous cat and so spends a year trying to get back to his family, while his mother searches in vain. You're right - there is an entirely unintentional, but nevertheless unmistakable, echo of the Madeleine McCann tragedy here, but that needs to be parked.

As Ugly negotiates a dangerous world, he encounters a variety of eccentric, anthropomorphised animals, the standouts being Leon Scott (channeling Captain Mainwaring) as Greylag, the Wing Commander of a squadron of geese and Robert Pearce as Bullfrog, the leprechaun-like amphibian who perks up Ugly just when he needs it.

The seven strong cast of actor-musicians, backed up by Oli Rew's excellent band, do a fine job, but the emotional heart of the tale is carried by Ellie Nunn as the forsaken mother and Liam Vincent Kilbridge as the lost cygnet. Nunn is all bustling Northern common sense, singing in a pleasing voice and killing one-liners to great comic effect. Kilbridge somehow manages to wear a woolly hat, jumper and scarf throughout the first act and is winningly positive through Ugly's ordeal.

George Stiles and Anthony Drewe's songs are never less than pleasing with upbeat melodies and jaunty lyrics capturing fairy tales' power to make trauma accessible for kids. "You Can Play With Your Food" shows that some people really do want to take your life and "Different" shows that diversity is to be celebrated and is not an excuse for cruelty. That message - perhaps never more important with public discourse increasingly influenced by social media's disinhibition and the Press's growing confidence to hide vicious victimising behind a spurious anti-PC rhetoric - is driven home, but never overplayed.

Though there's a touch too much sentimentality for my taste and a slightly off-message conclusion that the meek shall inherit the earth - but only if they are beautiful - Honk! makes you smile for two hours, with plenty for kids, parents and grandparents to enjoy. That lightness of touch is hard to pull off (great credit to director Andy Room whose steady hand maintains the right tone) and should be treasured in a world where the old maxim that "Bullies never prosper" is getting harder and harder to stand up.

Honk! is at the Union Theatre until 22 April.

Photo Nick Rutter.