The world of Dr Seuss will soon come to life on stage in Albany

The wild and wacky imaginative world of Dr Seuss will come alive when Seussical the Musical hits the stage in Albany.

Albany Light Opera and Theatre Company will present a Great Southern rendition of the musical comedy inspired by 15 stories from the famous children’s author.

Seussical the Musical follows The Cat in the Hat (Tahlia Robinson-Solczaniuk) as he tells the story of Horton The Elephant (Laurence Mitchell), who discovers a speck of dust containing Whos, including Jojo (Rachel Turner and Willow Huntley) — a Who child sent off to military school for thinking too many “thinks”.

Not only must Horton protect the Whos from a world of naysayers and dangers, but he must guard an abandoned egg left in his care by the irresponsible Mayzie La Bird (Renae Grafton).

Although Horton faces ridicule and danger, the intrepid Gertrude McFuzz (Jessica Turner) never loses faith in him.

For director Emma Davis, getting the opportunity to lead a cast in this musical was a “dream come true”.

“I am one of those people who grew up knowing all of the words to The Sneetches and Seussical has been my favourite musical for at least 20 years now,” she said.

“I’ve wanted to direct it for such a long time and to be given this opportunity is a bit of dream come true really.”

With a cast of 52 talented locals ranging in ages from 4 to 76, Davis said the show was set to be full of fun and colour.

“There are lots of characters people will be familiar with and a lot of stories people recognise,” she said.

“We’ve put our own spin on it ... I love the fact the stories chosen fit into two time periods of 1950s and 1980s, so we’ve made all the costumes in those eras which is fun and I’ve never seen it done with this visual interpretation before.”

Davis said she was looking forward to the audience seeing JoJo in a “show-stopping” scene about fish coming to visit him in the bathtub.

“The staging around that song is really quite exceptional, the audience will feel like they are underwater with all those fish,” she said.

“It’s just a really beautiful show, what makes it special is that anybody can go watch it and enjoy it.”

Seussical will be showing at the Albany Port Theatre for three weekends starting from September 3.

For tickets, visit Paperbark Merchants online or in-store.