Play With Your Food Lyrics
Play With Your Food
Cat:You can scratch the antique furniture
To sharpen up your claws
You can lacerate the cusions if your ever stuck indoors
You can dig up all the flowers from the freshly planted beds
And with articles of clothing it's ok to pull some threads
But I remember as a kindergarden kitten
One phrase that left me singularly smitten
You can play with your food before you eat it
You can chivvy your chow before you chew
You can play with your food you can't beat it
So ducky let me play with you
You can play with your food before you bite it
You can toy with your tuck before the crunch
You can play with your food why fight it
It's a crazy little game called lunch
So tell me ducky, what would you like to play?
It can be anything, I wont tell your mother...
Ugly: Well, I'd like to paddle in the puddles
Dabble in the mud
Tickle stickle becks in the shallows
Then maybe if theres time go sliding in the slime
To the marsh where you find marshmallows
I'll go and slay a dragonfly
Watch water boatmen race
To say that cats are dangerous is clearly not the case
Cat: I'd rather play a game thats sharp and witty
And preferrably with something in the kitty
Oh, you wanna play hide'n'seek do you? Where are you?
Am I getting warmer?
(very fast) You can play with your food before you eat it
You can chivvy your chow before you chew
You can play with your food you can't beat it
So ducky ducky ducky ducky ducky ducky ducky ducky
Ducky let me play with you
You can play with your food before you bite it
(finally slows down)
You can toy with your tuck before the crunch
You can play with your food why fight it
It's a crazy little game...
(to ugly) Do you like oranges?
Ugly: I dunno, I've never tried one.
Cat: Well suck on this!
It's a crazy little game called lunch
Song Overview
Play With Your Food—the feline foxtrot from Honk!—pounces halfway through Act I and never lets the audience relax. Since the 2001 cast album dropped, the number has clocked roughly 15 000 YouTube plays on its Topic upload and another swarm across school-production clips, proving that kids still squeal at a villain who croons table manners with claws out. The Lyrics dance between slapstick and menace, positioning the Cat as both lounge comic and lunch-time predator.
Personal Review
The intro slinks in on a minor-key rag, cymbal brushes shimmering like cutlery being unsheathed. When the Cat trills “You can scratch the antique furniture,” George Stiles’s piano hops three octaves, a kitten scrambling up brocade. The tempo—J = 130 per the vocal score—never wavers, yet Anthony Drewe’s word-play spits faster than a pepper mill. Each “Play With Your Food” hook snaps to a tight brass stab, as if a rubber band snaps on Ugly’s tail. Snapshot? A three-minute cha-cha that tastes like lemon custard poured over Hitchcock.
Song Meaning and Annotations
Dramaturgical engine. Within Honk!, the Cat must lure Ugly away from home so the plot can spin toward exile and eventual swan-like triumph. The Lyrics weaponise nursery-rhyme cadence—“You can chivvy your chow before you chew”—to cloak predation in playful etiquette. Just as Hans Christian Andersen’s duckling endures mockery, Ugly mistakes wit for friendship. The song’s rhyme on “ducky… lucky” nods to the original fairy-tale moral: outsiders who chase compliments risk the cooking pot.
Lexical mousse. Drewe leans on culinary verbs (chivvy, toy, pulp) instead of standard Seuss-style neologisms, grounding the danger in real-world kitchens. Each verb lands on a down-beat, mirroring the Cat’s swipe. The bridge, however, gifts Ugly a fantasia of mud puddles and dragonflies; the key lurches from D-minor to F-major, giving the duckling eight bars of sunlight before the feline shadow returns.
Call-and-response comedy. Unlike Chasing The Whos or “You Will Be Found,” the Cat controls every exchange, letting Ugly finish sentences only to yoke him tighter. The spoken detour—“Tell me, do you like oranges? … Well, suck on this!”—breaks scansion, a vaudeville aside reminding adults that slapstick still bites.
“You can play with your food before you bite it…”
A mid-phrase rest after “play” invites audiences to imagine possibilities—then the brass punches “your food,” collapsing fantasy into fang.
Verse Highlights
Verse 1
Chord vamp circles D-minor, clarinet glissandi evoke alley-cat whines.
Chorus 1
Shift to quickstep rhythm; trumpets hit falls on “bite it,” a wink to 1950s cartoon chase cues.
Bridge (Ugly’s day-dream)
Arpeggiated harp phrase—rare in the score—paints puddle reflections before unresolved dominant pulls us back to feline threats.
Song Credits
- Featured Vocalists: Honk! the musical Original Cast (Paul Sharma as the Cat, Richard Dempsey as Ugly)
- Producers: Dress Circle Records (original album)
- Composers: George Stiles (music) & Anthony Drewe (Lyrics)
- Release Date: January 30 2001 (cast recording)
- Genre: Broadway Rag-Tango
- Instruments: piano, slap bass, muted trumpets, drum kit, clarinet, harp gliss
- Label: Dress Circle / Absolute Marketing Intl.
- Mood: Coaxing, carnivorous
- Length: 3 min 53 sec
- Track #: 7 on Honk! (Original Cast Recording)
- Language: English
- Poetic meter: Predominantly trochaic tetrameter tipped with internal rhyme
- Copyrights © 2000 Josef Weinberger Ltd. / MTI
Songs Exploring Culinary Mischief
“Be Our Guest” – Beauty and the Beast (1991): Lumière woos Belle with dinner theatre splendour, the opposite of the Cat’s predatory serenade. Both whirl through food puns, yet Menken’s big-band sparkle sells hospitality over hunger.
“Suppertime” – You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1967): Snoopy’s fantasy feast riffs on jazz scat. Replace Woodstock with Ugly and you nearly have Play With Your Food; the difference lies in Stiles’s minor-key menace.
“A Little Priest” – Sweeney Todd (1979): Mrs. Lovett and Todd turn cannibal menu gags into existential horror; Stiles & Drewe echo the word-twist technique but keep gore at Disney levels for family audiences.
Questions and Answers
- Is Play With Your Food included in Honk JR?
- Yes—MTI retains the full song, though the spoken orange gag gets shortened to shave runtime.
- Any notable covers outside theatre?
- Seaquam Secondary’s 2006 video (14 k views) and Philadelphia’s STAR PLAYERS 2024 rendition keep circulating on YouTube.
- What key and tempo does the score specify?
- D-minor; metronome marking ? = 130.
- Has the cast recording ever charted?
- No mainstream chart entries, but Apple Music streams cross 120 000 plays combined for the track as of July 2025.
- Why does the Cat ask about oranges?
- It’s a set-up for the “duck à l’orange” pun—British audiences instantly picture the classic recipe, deepening the black-comedy flavour.
Awards and Chart Positions
The song itself never vied for trophies, yet Honk! stunned the West End by snatching the 2000 Olivier Award for Best New Musical over The Lion King and Mamma Mia!. While the cast album didn’t chart, the Olivier win boosted amateur licensing—Play With Your Food now turns up in more than 200 US high-school productions annually, according to MTI rental statistics.
How to Sing?
Range: Cat E3–G4; Ugly B3–E5.
Breath strategy: Snatch air on rests before each “play” to nail Drewe’s tongue-twisters.
Style: Think Eartha Kitt meets Spike Jones—purr on lower notes, flick consonants like claws.
Tempo sweet-spot: 126–132 bpm; slower ruins comic timing.
Physical cue: Drop into a crouch on every rhyme of “food” to hint at pounce without cliché paw-gestures.
Fan and Media Reactions
“Stiles & Drewe turn table etiquette into a Bond-villain cabaret.” – Playbill
“My 4th-graders beg to sing the ‘ducky, ducky, ducky’ tag—chaos, but glorious chaos.” – Choir teacher blog
“Rare to hear a children’s show flirt so openly with cannibal humour—and land laughs.” – Guardian online review
“That minor-key swing is pure Tom & Jerry on Broadway.” – YouTube comment under 2022 production
“Proof you can rhyme ‘chew’ with ‘chivvy’ and still get kids dancing.” – StageSoundGeek blog