In Praise of Nonsense: The Wallypug of Why
Show: The Wallypug of Why
Presented By: Waikato Actor Training
Directed by: Georgia Pollock-Barker
Venue: The Meteor
Dates : Sept 30- October 3
Reviewed by: Mike Williams
In 1895, a few decades after Alice fell down the rabbit hole, English author GE Farrow published The Wallypug of Why. It’s a children’s nonsense novel that was hugely popular in its time, led to sequels and the author made no secret of his debt to Lewis Carroll.
It isn’t so well known these days, which made Waikato Actor Training’s decision to stage it all the more interesting.
The premise, as far as nonsense allows one, is this. A young girl known simply as Girlie, and her younger sister Junior, unexpectedly find themselves in the land of Why. Its ruler, the Wallypug, is a king in name only: his people govern him, not the other way round.
What follows is a parade of oddball characters, logic turned inside out, and questions that never get a sensible answer. That, of course, is the point.
Adapting a 130-year-old piece of Victorian whimsy for a modern stage is no small ask. WAT director Georgia Pollock-Barker wrote this version and helmed the production. She kept the clever wordplay and gloriously bizarre situations of the original, and added some smart staging and scene changes that kept the whole thing moving.
The 18-strong cast, aged eight to 18, committed completely to the absurdity, and that’s the only way nonsense works. Half-hearted silliness is just awkward. Full-hearted silliness is a joy. Everyone on that stage was up for the task at hand. Bravo.
Each of the weird and wonderful, fantastic and fanciful creatures on stage had distinct character with their movements, behaviour and reactions. The human characters were all fully engaged in the storytelling, never just waiting for their next line. The entire cast played with a real exuberance that was impossible not to enjoy.
The costumes, puppets and props deserve a special mention too. All were made from scratch for this production. That kind of hands-on, imaginative craft gives a youth production real heart, and it suits this world perfectly.
But here’s what I kept thinking about on the drive home… We don’t make nearly enough room for nonsense anymore. Twenty-first-century life is relentlessly logical, optimised, scheduled and sorted by algorithm, and our kids get more of that than anyone.
Stories like this remind us that some things don’t have to make sense to be worth something. Silliness isn’t the opposite of intelligence. Wordplay and absurdity sharpen the mind and stretch the imagination. They also make us laugh, which we shouldn’t undersell. Arguably, we need them now more than ever.
So bravo to WAT for picking something so delightfully left-field, and to a young cast who threw themselves into it with such conviction. Farrow would approve (as would Carroll). The Wallypug, I suspect, would have asked why, and nobody would have had a sensible answer.
Exactly as it should be.
