A young girl named Hannah asks her somewhat neglectful father for a gorilla for her birthday — a request most parents would consider even more unrealistic that asking for a pony. When Dad gives Hannah a small toy gorilla she throws the toy into a corner, but that night the little toy comes to life and becomes the gorilla companion of her dreams. Adventure beckons, and Hannah and her new friend decide to go out and see what the city has to offer.

Welcome to the UH-Manoa’s production of “Gorilla,” directed by Mark Branner, assistant professor of theater at the UH-Manoa. “Gorilla” opens Dec. 12 in the Commons Gallery in the UH-Manoa Art Building. Gorillas can be scary, Branner acknowledges, but he hopes that “the softness of our particular gorilla — the eyes, face, expression — will be seen very positively.”

“Hannah is attracted to gorillas because of their immense size and strength, but primarily for their good fathering skills. That is really one of the deeper themes of the show — her infatuation with an animal who cares for his young mirrors the lack of care she experiences at first from her own father,” Branner said recently.

“Gorilla” is Branner’s fourth children’s theater show here in the past two years. Two of them — “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip” and “The BFG” — were presented on the Kennedy Theatre main stage; the third, “Eddie Wen’ Go,” was at the Hawaii Theatre. All four of them use stage props and various types of puppets to bring magical stories to life, but for “Gorilla” Branner needed British puppet-maker Nick Ash to scale things down to fit the new, smaller performance space (Ash designed the puppets for the original English stage production in 2013).

“The puppets in ‘The BFG’ (last year) were built to entertain 600 people in the Kennedy Theatre space and these puppets are crafted more carefully to play to 30 people or less,” Branner explained. “These puppets are more realistic, but still don’t have articulated mouths. We do have a few more control rods to allow movement of all limbs for both Hannah and the gorilla.”

Presenting “Gorilla” in an art gallery instead of on a standard theater stage is meant to link performing and art.

“We are offering art — visual, aural, performing — for kids and for everyone, so why not offer it in a gallery?” he asked. Brenner also said he liked the intimacy that the gallery setting affords.

Two separate casts of actors will perform on alternating days to accommodate the greater number of performances, the fact that the show full of student-actors is running during final-exam week, and to showcase the talents of the two Master of Fine Arts students who specialize in puppetry — Aubrey Watkins and Margot Fitzsimmons.

Watkins and Fitzsimmons alternate as Hannah. Nathaniel Niemi and Maseeh Ganjali share the role of Hannah’s workaholic father.

Branner decided to bring “Gorilla” to Hawaii when he saw the original 2013 Polka Theatre production with his daughter in London.

“I was teaching in London and during that time my family fell in love with the work of (author) Anthony Browne. When I saw that one of Browne’s first and best books was going to be adapted to the stage, I was very eager to take my daughter and immediately booked tickets to the show. I was able to see it through her eyes. It was simply magical.”