Ryan Scoble and Emily Winn in Seussical the Musical
One time, near Pittsburgh,
Farther than far
Lived a coal-fired towboat.
Her name was Omar.
Through many adventures
Omar found her way,
And now she’s a showboat
In Clinton, I - A.
She’s hosted a musical
More than one time.
This one’s called Seussical … .
Oh, it’s too hard to rhyme!
Seussical the Musical, now playing at Omar – I mean, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – features an exuberant mash-up of plots from about a third of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s lifetime output of 60-plus children’s books. (And yeah, there were more Dr. Seuss books after he died. Peculiar thing, that.) Ragtime co-creators Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty wrote the show’s book after putting their heads together with co-conceiver Eric Idle, with Ahrens supplying the lyrics and Flaherty the music. Its Broadway premiere in 2000 didn’t thrill the critics, but it became hugely popular regionally and on tour.
I saw Seussical Jr. at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse in 2021; so much was cut from that production that this full show seems like another animal – possibly a Sea-Going Dilemma Fish. Director /choreographer Amy Fritsche and co-music directors Linden Amster and Rachel Young helmed this production on the Mississippi River, and it definitively thrilled most of the near-capacity audience on Thursday’s opening night. For me, it was a well-done, absorbing good time with some outstanding musical and laugh-out-loud moments, but I didn’t quite achieve the exhilaration I’d anticipated. Perhaps that was due to the relentless temperatures in the 90s during the entire production week. It was hot enough to make anyone wilt, and I had trouble connecting with a few performers who appeared to lack energy and/or focus. However, the vocal quality was exemplary across the board – which is fantastic, as there are close to 40 musical numbers! The nine-piece orchestra was also spot-on; I don’t know where they were hiding, but the sound mix was perfect.
Paige Madej had energy to spare as JoJo, and the college student was wholly convincing as an exuberant tween. Seussical's story starts with her oppression for having too many unusual “thinks” (Seuss-speak for “ideas”). The Cat in the Hat (Adam Thompson) subsequently appears, and takes JoJo even further down her imaginative path, going so far as to zap the child onto the tiny dust speck where the Whos live. Here, this is the same Whoville burgled by the Grinch (Jesse Wilkerson); in a cameo, he explains that he recounts his old Christmas crimes as an annual tradition.
Ryan Scoble, one of the Actors Equity artists and also on the administrative staff this season, plays Horton the elephant, who holds the fate of a whole tiny world in his trunk, as well as the fate of an abandoned egg. I feel for Scoble, and hope he's not in pain, as the actor is performing in a sling – one that so perfectly matched his elephant ensemble, I thought it was Horton's trunk.
Davenport’s own Emily Winn plays Gertrude McFuzz, an anxious bird who’s determined to get a better tail so she’ll be liked. Oh, Gertrude. I like you a lot – don’t obsess over a tiny tail when you’ve got that great voice! There are other powerhouse vocalists in the Jungle of Nool, and they include Grace Avery as miscreant egg-mom Mayzie (also a hell of a dancer), and Vanessa Dominguez as Sour Kangaroo, a passion-filled Queen of Soul.
The Wickersham Brothers (Daniel Hanna, Tripp DeMille, and Grinch portrayer Wilkerson), singing, dancing, and tumbling with ’80s-boy-band panache in their mesh crops and headbands, are eager to say bye-bye-bye to the speck and the Whos on it, but they’re just too adorable to be scary.
What’s scary is Horton being captured at spear-point and going to trial; his kind deeds being reframed as crimes. (We were warned that “this ain’t Mother Goose” in the opening number.) Also scary: JoJo being sent to military school. I get that they were determined to get the Butter Battle into the story, but JoJo steps on a land mine, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mayor (Will Braxton Coffey and Peyton Houston), cry. (Rest assured, he's not really dead.) Two elements, though, save the Butter Battle scenes. First, on their exit, Jojo’s weeping parents skip away in the goofy rocking Who-gait already established. Second, the scene-abducting Haakan Packwood as General Schmitz is rubbery, silly-walking, fire whistle-voiced, weirdly mustachioed perfection.
The singing, dancing, lively Bird Girls (Madeline Burroughs, Mandy McGovern, and Houston) back up many of the numbers. We also have 13 performers as Young Whos; they do wonderfully, with miles of lyrics and choreography to get right. As for the music, “Solla Sollew” was a wistful pleasure to hear, but my favorite song is the wry, funny “How Lucky You Are,” cut from the same thematic and soft-shoe-vaudeville cloth as “All for the Best” from Godspell. It gets four reprises, and I still wanted more.
This musical
I recommend.
Get some tickets.
Bring a friend.
Glom on mom,
Hop on pop,
I give it a
Resounding “Yopp!”
Seussical the Musical runs at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (303 Riverview Drive, Clinton IA) through July 12, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)242-6760 and visiting ClintonShowboat.com.
