Kids find scatology to be enormously funny. Let's not mince words, people: We're talkin' poop jokes and armpit noises here.

"The Magical Bird: A Fabulous Filipino Folk Tail," fits the bill, with a story about a bird that turns people into stone by dropping some doo-doo on them.

How else to captivate viewers, aside from the doo-doo references? With fabulous staging, of course. We're talkin' mirrors, sequins, feathers — a real Mardi Gras parade action.

In a children's play?

Right on!

The premise is simple enough. Good King Fernando is so distraught by his wife's recent death that he is unable to sleep and is in danger of dying himself. Only the song of a magical bird might save him, and his three sons set out on the quest to capture her.

Joe Dodd's set, David Minkoff's props, and Kris Fitzgerald's puppetry do a bang-up job of carrying the Honolulu Theatre for Youth show, written by Elizabeth Wong and directed by Eric Johnson. Original songs and music are by Kala'i Stern.

The King's bed has a built-in keyboard at its foot, where composer Stern bangs out the melodies while simultaneously playing Ferdinand.

The boys need transportation, so they borrow the keys to the family water buffalo — or what a water buffalo might look like if it were a parade float, a wheeled contraption with horns and a tail and hung with streamers and tiny mirrors.

The magical bird lives in a "diamond" tree constructed of rebar, colored lights and pennants, and is represented by a hand puppet that coyly lifts its tail feathers to spray its victims with aerosol streamers.

This makes the kids in the audience absolutely whoop with joy.

But the HTY acting company is doing a lot more than just whoopin' over the poopin'.

Fernando's three sons are Pedro (Hermen Tesoro Jr.), Diego (BullDog), and baby Juan (AlvinChan). But they are more familiarly nicknamed Bing Dong, Bing Bong and Bing Pong. This leads inevitably to some Three Stooges behavior and the ultimate dialogue exchange:

"Who is this?"

"I'm Bing Bong."

"Answer the door."

Guest actor Kristian Lei joins the mayhem in several small roles — most notably, a frantic hermit who wears a bucket on her head (to fend off the doo-doo) and a rubber band on her wrist (to snap herself awake from the birdsong).

Will Bing Pong be able to revive his stony brothers and sacrifice his baby blanket to diaper the magical bird? Drop in on the zany action to find out for yourself.