“Why Suessical?” asks Robert Salberg, the director of Pentacle Theater’s current production of “Seussical the Musical.”

In his note in the show’s program, he tries to explain why we adults need Dr. Seuss now more than ever. This show is wild and silly, the Technicolor costumes (by Lorraine Fullerton) and make-up are outrageous, and yet, there is more to this family-friendly musical than that, just as Dr. Seuss wrote books that are more than just rhymed children’s stories.

“Seussical the Musical” is a show that combines “complexity and simplicity,” as Salberg puts it, in the same way that Dr. Seuss crafted his most famous tales. Dr. Seuss shows us our collective bad side in childish simpleness. In this show there is an absurd war, and Horton the Elephant (played touchingly by Jeffery D. Witt) is gleefully persecuted by fellow dwellers of the Jungle of Nool. There are other examples of bad behaviors as well, but in typical Seuss fashion, those with the biggest hearts prevail.

The audience at the Pentacle Theater is first greeted by a set of Seuss trees and Seuss waterways painted in Seuss pastels as designed by Tony Zandol. Onto this leaps The Cat in the Hat, exuberantly played by Slade Thackeray, and Jojo the Thinker, played by Joseph Allen, who has a huge voice for a 12 year-old.

The Cat begins by telling the story of Horton the Elephant who, due to his enormous ears, hears the tiny Whos and vows to protect them. Over the course of the show, Horton is also tricked into taking care of the egg of Mayzie LaBird’s (a saucy Kelli Swanson Jaecks). Horton’s one friend, beside the Whos, is a short-tailed bird named Gertrude McFuzz, played by the jazzy-voiced Michelle Pederson.

The sub-plot is about the tiny Whos trapped on a speck that Horton tries to protect. But life in Whoville is complex, too. Jojo the Thinker is sent to military school for dreaming too much and finds himself on the front line of a war over which side to butter toast. The Whos also know their fate lies with the whims of a huge world that questions their very existence. Horton may claim “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” but the other creatures of the Jungle of Nool take some convincing.

Horton and Jojo use their integrity and big “thinks” to try to save tiny Whoville. These biggest and littlest of characters bond in a song titled “Alone in the Universe” — who among us hasn’t felt that way? This song is only one of a long list of musical numbers that demonstrate not only the amazing vocal talent of the huge cast (Rachel Duncan as the Sour Kangaroo is yet another standout), but also of the live four-piece band tucked underneath the stage. Beth Eck’s vocal direction and Toby Abraham-Rhine’s choreography make the show pop.

And then there’s The Cat. Thackeray’s Cat is omnipresent, steering the narrative, putting ideas in poor Jojo’s head, and generally stirring things up. Thackeray’s mischievous energy on stage is contagious, and the glee his character takes in making trouble is highly entertaining.

And finally, the scene-stealing star of the show is first-grader David Little who plays Max the Dog among other parts. Every time he comes on stage, the audience lets out a collective “Aw!” He has only one line, but leave it to a kid to upstage all the old pros.

So, “Why Seussical?” indeed? In Dr. Seuss’s moral universe, the dreamers and the good-hearted prevail over the flighty, small-minded, sour people. Horton’s faithfulness triumphs, Jojo’s big "thinks" do amount to something, and the tiniest, speck-living Whos eventually make themselves heard. In this way “Seussical the Musical” is a parable for all of us, young and old.

Plus, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.