IT may be “a poultry tale”, as the song says, but “Honk the Musical” takes on the archetypal Hans Christian Andersen story of the ugly duckling who grows into a swan and runs with it.

This is one of the best shows by Ickle Pickle in a long time. It is considerably helped by a first-rate script, by Americans George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, who cooked up a seemingly endless stream of lightheaded avian puns (“cygnet ring”, “down” in the mouth, “eggxellent”).

If parents came expecting the 29 cast members to be dressed up as animals, they’d have been disappointed. The philosophy of this production by Cornelia Carson was to get the young actors creating physical movements to evoke their animal’s characters.

A good example of this was in Alexis Longley’s gentle portrayal of Mother Duck Ida (get it? eiderdown). Longley wore the costume of a human mum and even felt her tummy when she was about to give birth, though the giant cut-out eggs indicated where her ducklings would emerge. This role was beautifully sung, although less of an American accent and more Aussie twang would have been preferable.

There were also militaristic goose-stepping geese, jumping frogs, malicious yellow ducklings wearing ducky shower-caps and fearful turkeys longing for Christmas to be over, all portrayed with relish.

What I liked about this show was the consistency of performance. Ickle Pickle uses holiday time to train the cast members so that everybody gets a fair chance and it paid off.

Of course there were some standouts. Apart from Ida, there was Adrian Thomas as the villainous cat with a penchant for duck a l’orange, Matt Hardy as the reluctant Father duck, Drake and Natalie Whalley as Penny, a lovely young swan on ballet points.

But above all, radiant, optimistic and quite unsinkable, was Kaitlin Nihill as Ugly, floating along with no sense of the wicked world all around, until the clever transformation into a handsome swan.

The quiet set by Wayne Shepherd suggests the perimeter of a pond and the choreography by Hannah McFadden and Talisha Jackson gave the show plenty of visual entertainment for very tiny children.

The Ugly Duckling tale has a deeper and more important meaning in these days of bullying and peer-group pressure – it’s perfectly fine to be different.