People of all ages were wowed at the Manoel Theatre on Sunday by a fairy tale about finding your voice even when nobody seems to be listening.

Written and directed by Denise Mulholland with music and lyrics by Luke Saydon, the theatrical performance Hush, by the Teatru Manoel Youth Theatre, got under way as part of Toi Toi, the theatre’s educational programme.

Toi Toi is now firmly established as a major feature of the theatre’s calendar. It supports the national theatre in fulfilling part of its mandate to integrate culture and education, as well as to act as an effective audience development tool.

The musical is about a little boy from a very famous musical family, Gus Nightingale. When his mother dies, all music is banned from his house. After he is dreadfully humiliated by The Maestro, Gus decides the safest option is to stop speaking and singing.

An effective audience development tool

One day, Gus passes the old music shop and finds it open. Inside, he finds a girl called Clementine Pickles who shows Gus how it is possible to play beautiful music even on broken instruments.

But as Gus is leaving, an evil stranger enters the shop, locks Clementine in a cello case, steals her voice and a precious baton.

This unknown, evil stranger uses the baton to extract sounds from everyone and everything, leaving the world a completely silent place.