This Play is No Ugly Duckling

A giddy buzz erupted behind the curtain as dress rehearsal drew to a close.

Never mind the handful of glitches and miscues last night. Nearly three months of learning their lines, hitting their marks and belting out all the right notes had finally reached the moment the 50-member cast of ‘tween-aged thespians have been waiting for: The next time the curtain opens, it will be onto an audience of hundreds waiting to be dazzled by "Honk! Jr.," Montgomery Village Middle School’s spruced-up version of the ugly duckling in search of redemption.

Director Joseph Luparello has wanted to do Honk! for years. The British musical is neither too risqué nor too elementary, he said, and is an ideal choice for the school’s first theatrical undertaking since last school year’s take on "Willie Wonka," a prodigious production that set the high-water mark of his seven years at the theater program’s helm.

Flush with talented eighth-graders last year, Wonka was "a perfect storm" that drew more than 500 on opening night and another 300 the night after, Luparello said. What this year’s cast lacks in acting experience, it more than makes up for in vocals. Honk! gives that bevy of stellar singers plenty of chance to shine—while resonating with that middle-school milieu of adolescent angst and self-consciousness.

"It’s a great message to send out to the kids that it doesn’t matter what you look like," he said, "it doesn’t matter how tall, how short, how fat, how ugly; there’s always something good that you can find in people."

The role of the fabled duckling—here simply named Ugly—is brought to life by seventh-grader Sara Hoover. Sixth-grader Stephani Botchway packs a comedic punch as Cat, while classmate Paris Holbrook gives Maureen the voice of an angel. And at the core of the performance is seventh-grader Mary Abbott, who takes on the role of Ugly’s conflicted mother, Ida.

The way this crop of young performers is shaping up, Luparello is envisioning Alice in Wonderland next year—with the title role pegged for Abbott, who he sees as ripe with the potential to thrive on-stage for years to come.

"She’s immensely talented," Luparello said. "Mary’s got the full package: she’s incredibly bright, a straight-A student, a hard worker. You couldn’t ask for a better kid."

Mary is the third of seven siblings to fall sway to the acting bug: herself, brother (and Honk! co-star) Jacob and sister Elisabeth, a Watkins Mill junior starring in the high school’s production next week of Little Shop of Horrors.

Before last year, Mary’s acting credentials started and ended with her first-grade portrayal of the Little Red Hen. She tried out for Wonka almost on a whim, yet somehow landed the role of Charlie.

"I think I almost passed out when Mr. Luparello told me," she said. "And then it was a lot of fun, and I was like, 'I want to keep on doing this.'"

Coming off her turn as the pure-hearted pauper, playing a duck this year presents a wholly different challenge. But while she’s heeding Honk!’s deeper lesson—which, as a self-described "nerdy bookworm," struck a personal chord—she and her co-stars also made sure to have plenty of fun along the way.

"It’ll be a lot of fun because there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of talent, there are some really funny punch lines," she said. "It’ll just be a cool experience."

Honk! Jr. is at 7 p.m. today and tomorrow. Tickets cost $5, which goes to the Montgomery Village Middle School theater program.