An idyllic wetland somewhere near Wellington is the creative and imaginative setting for KidzStuff Theatre for Children’s re-telling of The Ugly Duckling story.

In this wetland live a family of four ducklings: Daryl Duck (Craig Geenty), Dotty Duck (Bryony Skillington), Darleen Duck (Sally Stopforth) and Douglas Duck (George Mason).

However, one duckling, Douglas, is unlike the others in that he has big red feet and beak, and black feathers, unlike the other fluffy white ducklings. And so, as the well-known story goes, Douglas is laughed at by everyone else and eventually is dumped by his family.

All alone and nowhere to go, he wanders aimlessly about until he meets various storybook characters who are all in a similar situation – trying to find themselves. There is the Frog Prince, Chicken Little and the Owl and the Pussy Cat in their pea-green boat.

All of them have the same advice: Have the courage to listen to the little voice inside, to look deep into your heart and you will know who you are. Eventually, Douglas does and realises that he is a majestic swan, gaining everyone’s respect in the process.

Director Rachel More has gathered a very lively and animated cast to bring the story alive, which they do with lots of action, humour (the puns on ducks and eggs run thick and fast) and interaction with the audience.

The costumes are just as bright and lively, making this an ideal show for these school holidays.
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The core message of the Ugly Duckling tale – “Don’t judge a book by its cover” – comes through loud and clear in Rob Ormsby’s free adaptation, which cleverly links the young outcast with oddballs and misfits from classic folk tales.  

In the cast-created flax and toi-toi-fringed swamp, where hunters and poachers lurk, the intro-duck-tory phase (sorry, Ormsby’s punning is contagious) traverses the metaphysical conundrum about which came first, the hen or the egg, before the substantive tale is hatched.

The grey-downed and red-billed Douglas (George Mason) is pilloried for being different and therefore ugly by a mean flock of white-feathered, yellow-billed ducks: Daryl (Craig Geenty), Dotty (Bryony Skillington) and Darleen (Sally Stopforth).

There is nice detail in Darleen quite liking him until the others convince her to conform to the majority view. They ditch him by tricking him into a game of hide-and-seek. Thus Douglas becomes duckless and friendless.

He encounters a Princess (Skillington) whose attempt at internet dating has produced a kiss-questing Frog (Geenty) who doesn’t look anything like his princely website photo. Chicken Licken (Stopforth) passes through, trying to control her paranoid habit of squawking dire predictions, until something sets her off again, provoking the Frog (who is really Prince Good Looking the Third) to launch into a motivational song: ‘If We Believe …’  

The flip-side, sentiment-wise, is ‘Don’t Believe All They Say Of You’ (Ormsby has also composed and recorded the music for the excellent songs). ‘Waddling On’ – which may owe something to Herman’s Hermits ‘Travelling Light’ – becomes a hum-along audience favourite after just two airings.

Audience participation is not of the ‘look out behind you’ variety, but more a means of stopping the tots getting restless by letting them stretch and dance about for a bit, as when they manifest the bong trees the Owl (Skillington) and Pussy Cat (Stopforth) have set out to find, in their pea green boat (called Watties).  

Adults may happily conjure with the question of whether this pairing recalls the traditional panto convention of a female playing the ‘principal boy’ or stands as a spot of ‘agit prop’ for same-sex marriage. As for the fur-coated pair’s tendency to talk like Californian hippies, my guess is the bong trees have something to do with that.

Enlightenment comes from Three Blind Mice (Geenty, Skillington and Stopforth), in Buddhist monk robes with inscrutable accents to match. “Go home” is their timeless advice – and sure enough, to the distant strains of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Douglas returns to discover his true self: the Swan Prince …

At the opening performance I felt the transformation felt a bit fudged and lacking in dramatic impact. And because the beaks the ducks and Douglas wear don’t function as commedia masks, but rather inhibit facial expression, more needs to be conveyed with the eyes and whole body.

That said, thanks to Rachel More’s deft direction of a well-wrought script with a splendid cast, a full house of children and parents leaves thoroughly entertained and a little wiser about no pre-judging by appearances. The Ugly Duckling delivers on message, style and fun-factors.  

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