Oh, The Things You Can Think!

Oh, the things you can think when you think about Seuss! The Grade 8s have certainly been thinking and working hard since early September to prepare their musical: Seussical Jr. Featuring characters from several favourite stories by Dr. Seuss, Seussical is fun for the whole family.  Narrated by the Cat in the Hat, Reese F, Seussical Jr follows the story of Horton the Elephant, Sarah R, who, one bright day in the Jungle of Nool, hears a call for help from a tiny speck of dust. Horton replies to the speck, places it on a clover to protect it, and discovers the tiny world of the Mayor, Peter Q, his Wife, Amelia G, and their daughter, Jojo, Quinn N.  Bullied by the Sour Kangaroo, Kenya B, Horton loses his small friends to the Wichersham Brothers, Keaton H, Conner LL, and Rhys N, and a “great patch of clovers 100 miles wide!”  Lamenting her “one-feather tail,” Gertrude McFuzz, Celeste B, takes pills to grow more plumage, hoping to “catch the eye of an elephant.” However, while Horton is preoccupied with finding his Whos, Gertrude’s affections, like those of Thomas Wyatt in “Whoso List to Hunt” are in vain. Unrequited love has no date. In the thick of it all, Mayzie LaBird, Natasha F, convinces Horton to sit on her egg and keep it warm while she flies off to Palm Beach. He can’t refuse, so Horton consents to sit, finding himself “caught between a dust speck and an incubating egg!” After “51 weeks,” Horton (with his “egg, nest, and tree”) finds himself in a circus in New York. A surprise visit from Mayzie results in Horton involuntarily adopting an egg close to hatching. Gertrude also turns up at the circus to profess her love for Horton, telling him of the tail she grew to get him to notice her. Since “you can’t run away from a Sour Kangaroo,” a group of citizens of Nool headed by the Sour Kangaroo herself arrives to arrest Horton and take him to court for “talking to a dust speck, disturbing the peace, and loitering… on an egg.”   After a heated trial in which Horton tries valiantly to save the Whos, Judge Yurtle the Turtle, Declan S, orders “Horton the Elephant remanded to the Nool Asylum for the Criminally Insane.” The dust speck seems doomed to be boiled “in a hot, steaming kettle of beazlenut oil”, but Horton urges the Whos to make as much noise as they can in the hopes that someone besides Horton will finally hear them.  In the end, “the whole world [is] saved by the smallest of all” when Jojo, whose thinks often get her in trouble, thinks of a new word: Yop. Once all the doubters realize that there is a world on the dust speck and vow to join Horton in protecting the Whos, a loud cracking noise is heard from Horton’s other dependant: the egg.  A baby elephant-bird emerges who “looks just like [Horton] except for the wings.”  When Horton is concerned that he will only be able to teach his baby the ways of the earth, Gertrude speaks up and promises to be there for Horton and to help him nurture the bird part of the child. The show ends with Jojo being hailed “thinker non-stop” and peace is restored to the Jungle of Nool.  The cast clearly put tremendous effort and enthusiasm into their show. It certainly paid off, but they couldn’t have done it without the support of Ms. Blake, Mr. Newns, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Patel. A huge thank-you goes to these wonderful people, and to the Grade 8s for putting on a fantastic show!  Hannah R, Mackenzie ‘18