The Midnight Train Crossing

"Click, Clack, Moo" is based on the children's book of the same name - though I've never read it.
It was the last in the series of plays that we have seasion tickets to.

The story is rather cute. It takes place on a farm, Farmer Brown's farm to be exact. He has two cows, a hen, and a duck. The cows and hen are upset by the drafty conditions in the barn and want that to change, but are unable to communicate with farmer Brown.
Then, they get a hold of a type writer and send a politely worded note requesting electric blankets.
Farmer Brown says no, so they organize a strike. If they can't have their blankets, then there will be no milk or eggs. He tries to fight back, but eventually he calls in a neutral party - the duck.

The duck was played by 14 year old Benjamin Eggebrecht and he did a brilliant job. The duck acts as the narrator, aided by his "Storyteller's Master Universal Digital 5-in-1 Remote Control 2000" which he used to rewind and pause the action. He also used it's 'translate' button so that the audience could understand the animals.
However, three times during the show the 'translate' button didn't work.
So, duck had to translate the old fashoned way. That meant that the cows were moo-ing, but at the same time, Duck was speaking in "english". It was very amusing
The third time that things went wrong was probably the most amusing. Duck hit 'translate' and suddenly a voice booming over the loudspeaker:
"Well Marie [Or something like that] in this scene, we were trying to achieve a certain -"
Duck: Whoops. Sorry. That was the director's commentary.

The Remote control was also used to rewind, which meant that they turned on a strobe light and walked backwards. All except Farmer Brown (Joseph Bowen). He spoke all of his lines backwards - which was really impressive and really funny.
Duck would also pause the show to insert bits of crucial narration, and he seemed to also enjoy pausing it to play tricks on the other characters, such as Farmer Brown. The farmer would set his hand on Duck's shoulder, Duck would "pause" and say something, and in the course of his line, he would move away. Then, when he unpaused, the farmer would be quite confused to see Duck "magically" vanishing.

There were two cows, cleverly called Cow 1 (Sheri Williams Pannell) and Cow 2 (Debra Babich) and a hen (Elizabeth Piziak). Cow 2 and hen spent a lot of time fighting and getting into silly arguments and annoying the heck out of Cow 1.
Cow 2 also showed a tendency to violence... she kept wanting to kick Farmer Brown off the farm, for Cow 2 got a hold of the book "Animal Farm" and was reading it throughout the play.

Cows and hen tried to tell Farmer Brown that they were cold, but of course, he couldn't understand, so they tried to act out how cold they were... with Hen playing the wind, but that didn't work either.
Duck has a problem too, he's bored.
He decides to explore the barn (Because he lives in the pond) and discovers a "Big Box Of Junk" (Clearly labeled as such) and he starts to go through it, finding some random things: an old clock radio, an issue of Sports Illustrated, a Britney Spears CD, a smelly old sock, a type writer, and a rubber fish.
Upon hearing the animals returning, Duck quickly packs everything up and puts it back - except for the type writer, which he hides in Hen's nest.

Of course they find it, and spent an amusing dance sequence trying to figure out what it is, until Duck finally tells them, and shows them how it works.
He puts a piece of paper in and starts typing: "T. H. E. Q. U. I. C. K. B. R. O. W. N. F. O. X. J. U. M. P. E. D. O. V. E. R. T. H. E. -"
Hen shoves him out of the way: "My turn! ........ L........... A....... Z..... Y....."
The other animals wait impatiently as she hunts out each letter.
Hen: "..... D...... O..... G."
Cow 2: "And I belive that is called the 'hunt and peck method'"

Eventually the cows decide that they are going to use the type writer to ask Farmer Brown for some electric blankets.
At this point, Cow 1 sings a pretty ballad type song about electric blankets, while the other three animals serve as back-up singers. Well choreographed back up singers even.

The farmer is startled to find the politely worded note asking for electric blankets, and he laughs, telling the cows "No way!"
They try again, and after a few more notes, they decide to go on strike, no milk and no eggs until they get their electric blankets
This creates a problem for Farmer Brown, he can't run a farm without milk and eggs.

Not knowing that Duck has been involved all along, he type up his own note, demanding that the strike end, and sends Duck in.
The cows finally decide that they are willing to trade their typewriter for electric blankets (and a diving board for duck)
So, the cows and hen get their blankets, and duck gets what he wanted - a little excitement. And Farmer Brown gets what he wants, no more typing cows.

The end of the show was pretty funny - the cows are all settling in, and Farmer Brown is content. Duck, meanwhile, is planning what other improvements he can make to his pond: "I can put the gazeebo here, and an azeleia bush here..."

And of course, the show was a musical, but I don't have the song list. "

The previous play I saw here was Honk which also takes place in a farm yard. In Honk, the animals didn't look all that much like animals, but in this play they certainly all did. All of them were wearing big furry (hot looking) costumes. But semi-realistic costumes too. It was pretty easy to tell that the cows were cows, the hen was a hen and the duck was a duck (a mallard actually).

Now, if that weren't enough, there was some more interesting things that occurred.
My mother and I had a little "pre-show entertainment" with the drama that occured in the row in front of us.
There are six seats in the front row of the section we were in. A family of four came in... and then a family of three. Both of them had tickets that said that they should be sitting in seat number four
The very baffled usher sent for the also baffled house manager. The family of four agreed to be split up, and the house manager found them seats, but she was very flustered about it. She said that in the three years that she's been doing this, this has never happened before.