Synopsis
Act 1
In the story, the Cat in the Hat is an image of the imagination of Boy. As the play opens the Cat appears before Boy and says he is going to tell him a story of a person as imaginative as Boy.
The story is loosly based on the book Horton hears a Who, where an Elephant called Horton hears a noise coming from a spec of dust and decides to look after it. The spec of dust turns out to contain a civilisation called Who-Ville, which is populated by Whos. The Cat pushes Boy into the story as the supposedly troubled son of the Mayor of Who-Ville. The son Jojo is in trouble for having unusual Thinks.
Jojo is sent to Military School and meets Horton. At the same time Horton's bird neighbour Gertrude is falling in love with Horton. Through a series of macguffins Horton loses the clover he was keeping Who-Vile on, ends with a bird egg about to hatch, and is captured by hunters.
Act 2
Horton is auctioned off to the travelling Circus McGurkus. Horton misses Jojo and Who-Ville, and the Mayor and his Wife begin to miss Horton and Jojo. Both groups sing a song about a magic place called Solla Sollew.
In the Millitary Camp Jojo is lost in a minefield and assumed dead by the camp leader, General Schmitz, and his parents. However he is just lost, and Cat encourages him to use this Thinks to get home.
Gertrude finds the clover, manages to free Horton and confesses her love to him, but both are promptly recaptured and put on trial for the crimes of "talking to a speck, disturbing the peace, and loitering... on an egg". Gertrude and Horton makes his case, but he is found guilty and is remanded to the "Nool Asylum for the Criminally Insane", and the clover is to be destroyed. Horton gets the Whos to make enough noise to convince everyone they are real, but they can only do this when they make up a new word, "Yopp".
The animals are convinced and Who-Ville is saved; the egg hatches into an Elephant-Bird, which Gertrude and Horton agree to raise together, and Jojo is accepted by his parents. Everyone vanishes, Jojo turns back into Boy, and they boy picks up the hat again and says "Seuss!"
Main Characters
The Cat in the Hat
Cat acts as a narrator for the story, first of all creating it and then moving it along. The Cat also appears as a variety of various minor characters during the story.
Boy/Jojo
Boy is the protagonist of the show, however the character of Boy himself never seems to have any real conflict. The main conflict is with Jojo, who convinces his parents to accept him for his unusual Thinks.
Horton
The second protagonist, an elephant determined to protect the world of Who-Vile.
Gertrude
A shy bird who falls in love with Horton and helps him in various sitations.
USP
The USP of the show is the source material. The books of Dr. Seuss are the one of the most unusual children's books, and heavily embraces a weird world with wacky characters and story lines. The play is an amalgamation of several of these books, and given the popularity of them has a large pre-existing target audience.
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