A person's a person, no matter how small.

Act Two (being the scenes directly following Act One)

Horton sits on the egg for fifty one weeks. He is pulled from town to town and draws a crowd of thrill seekers cause he is so laughable. How humiliating. One day, who should come looking for a laugh but a flashy bird named Mayzie with a fabulous tail. It takes Mayzie a little while to remember who Horton is and why he is so happy to see her. Horton offers the egg back to her. He has made his promise good and now he would like to go home. Mayzie makes a few lame excuses and then tells Horton that, since it has made him such a big hit in show biz, he can keep the egg. Gee, she feels great about herself. She gave something that was hers away to help make someone else happy and successful. Her shallowness never ceases to amaze me. She makes a hasty exit leaving Horton with the egg for good. Horton is technically free to get rid of the egg now, if he wanted to. He's not baby sitting, egg sitting, anymore. But he sees the egg as abandoned and unwanted and helpless, just like himself, so he keeps it. He sings over it about a place where he can find belonging. Solla Sollew is a far away place where people are kind and there is no war or cruel winters. It's the place that Horton and Jojo go in their mind when they are thinking all alone. They have been looking for it all their lives. Sometimes Horton thinks he's almost there but it's always just out of reach. When they finally find it they will be home and they will stay there forever. Unlimited desire for perfect Home.

Back to the Whos. When the clover was dropped and lost, Whoville was wrecked as if an earth quake had struck. In military school, General Shmitt has been training the boys to fight. There is a war on Who against the people who put their butter on the wrong side of the bread. On Christmas eve, on the field of battle, Jojo takes a stand against the General. He refuses to fight, gives up his sword and his uniform hat and walks away... right through a mine field. There is an explosion and General Shmit has to break the news to Jojo's parents as they are trying to celebrate Christmas without their son.
The Cat takes us back to the scene of the tragedy to see if we need really fear the worst.
I guess I'll tell you a bit about this song since it's one I can put up here for you to hear. All through the show, Jojo uses his imagination to make the world more colorful for himself. When he stands up to General Shmitt it is the first time he uses that brilliant mind of his to do something that means something. Then when he is escaping over the mine field the Cat (a symbol of his imagination) comes with a group of creeping figures called hunches. His imagination is running the wrong way with him. He's scaring himself into helplessness. In the middle of the song he shouts at the Cat to go away. He doesn't want to think any more. It always gets him into trouble. Then the cat gives him a new 'think'. The Cat thinks a glimmer of light for Jojo. The hunches are all in Jojo's head and he starts to control them in stead of letting them confuse him. He uses that great mind of his to find his way home. At the end of the song Jojo makes it home and the music swells to end triumphantly with Jojo's two songs; The theme from Alone in the Universe ("I have wings and I can fly...") and then the chorus of hunches sing 'anything's possible!' It's one of my favorite moments in the show. Jojo and his imagination are undervalued because the other Whos don't see a practical use for it. In his song Anything's Possible, Jojo (with the help of the Cat) makes a huge mess of his house cause he let his 'thinks' carry him away. Later he feels alone in the universe because no one else wants to share his 'thinks' with him. When he uses his 'thinks' to find his way home, the other Whos can finally value and share his gift. Both Alone in the Universe and Anything's Possible are resolved and completed by the end of 'Have'in a Hunch"

I bet you forgot about Gertrude McFuzz.
Well, that's okay, I mean, everyone does.
But Gertrude did something that not any bird could do.
So this is the tale of Miss Gertrude Part two.

Gertrude shows up in the show again at the foot of Horton's tree in the middle of the night. Her tail is gone. Horton is kind of surprised to see her. Why should she even be there. He asks how she found him. When Gertrude says it's a long story, I don't think Horton realized what he was asking for.
Gertrude launches into the tale of her tail. She realized that the tail was more about her own vanity then helping Horton and so she had it plucked out. It was a painful operation but it was worth it cause now she could save the man she loved. She went through a horrible fantastic journey to get to him sacrificing every form of comfort and security all for Horton. She tells Horton, in great detail, all the things she did for him. The song keeps growing and growing. The words are a crazy tongue twister. She pretty much pours her heart out for him. Always repeating and reminding him that it was 'for you' "All for you!"

"Now here I am, the worse for ware, and here you are. I'm here, your there.
And maybe NOW you'll now I care for you!"

Completely out of breath she adds quietly.

"Oh yeah, and Horton, one more thing. It took me seven weeks, but I found your clover too."

That is the happiest moment ever for Horton. What a great feeling to have his Whos back and know that they are safe. "Gerturde, I've never noticed before, but you're amazing" Way to pass on the joy! Gertrude is floating.

Their joy is short lived however. The Sour Kangaroo and the Wickersham Brothers show up and put Horton under citizens arrest. They take him to trail and testify against him. He is charged with 'talking to a spec, disturbing the peace and loitering on an egg." Yurtle the Turtle quickly finds Horton guilty and sentences him to be locked up in the Nool asylum for the criminally insane. The clover is doomed to be boiled in oil. Horton doesn't care what happens to him but he cannot see Who destroyed. As the Wickersham brothers try to pry the clover out of his hand... trunk.... he makes one last attempt to prove that the Whos exist. He calls to the Whos and asks them to shout, all together shout and make themselves heard. Horton can't help them but if they shout loudly enough they can save themselves and Horton too. They must shout over the gleeful singing of the Nool Citizens with their tinny voices that only Horton could hear to begin with. It's a pretty noisy song. The Whos are shouting "We are here, we are here!" The Nool Citizens are chanting "Boil it, boil it!" and Horton breaking in desperately to encourage them. Then the cat friezes everyone for a moment. The Whos look to Jojo, the thinker. "Think of something!" The Cat narrates:

"Now just for a moment, young Jojo looked Grim
The fate of the Whos rested squarely on him.
And then came a think, a peculiar new word
no one ever had hear."

Then everyone is singing and chanting and yelling again and over it all, the small voice of Jojo carries

YOP!

The citizens of Nool gasp, they hear! Horton's not crazy, the Whos really are persons no matter how small, Jojo is a hero and a great thinker. The Sour Kangaroo promise to help protect the spec. And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me Too!"

Just as Jojo is about to 'think' a perfect ending for this story the egg begins to hatch. Or maybe that was the ending he thought of. In any case it hatches and out comes an 'elephant bird'. Horton has that sinking feeling that you get when you are handed the most wonderful gift that you have ever recieved and you know that it won't fit, it's not going to work, you are somehow unworthy, or unable to enjoy it.

"Oh Gertrude what'll I do? I'm slow and I'm fat. All I know is the earth. He'll need much more than that!"

Then Gertrude gets to sing his song for him so he knows, beyond a doubt, that he can count on her and he'll never never be alone in the universe again.

Gertrude sings: "I have wings and I can fly.
You teach him earth and I will teach him sky."
Horton: "Just call my name,"
Both: "And I'll see you through"
Horton: "One small voice in the universe"
Gertrude: "One true friend in the universe"
Both: "Who believes in You!"

Then the cat ends it all by putting it all back into his hat. And, after one of my favorite curtain call songs of all time, leaves that hat, the symbol of imagination and creativity, in the hands of the boy from the beginning of the show. What will the boy do with it?

"Their adventures were over,
The sky became... pink.
And then guess what happened?
Well, what do you Think..."