Peter and the Starcatcher is a ripping good yarn for the whole family
Theatre review by Gail M. Burns
I always trust the Weston Playhouse to offer up spectacular regional premieres of recent Broadway hits. This modest but beautiful playhouse, situated on the village green of an impossibly perfect little town in southern Vermont, creates big theatre on a small scale and always leaves me breathless. One of my great pleasures over the years has been getting my hands on the Weston schedule and planning an annual day trip north to see whatever they are doing that no one else is. This year I gasped with delight when I saw Peter and the Starcatcher in the line-up.
Poignantly – and there is much that is poignant in this prequel to Peter Pan based on the best-selling 2004 young adult novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson – this production at Weston opened mere days after the passing of Roger Rees, who won an Obie for his co-direction, with Alex Timbers, of the original 2009 production. The script was penned by Rees’ widower, Rick Elice, and this was clearly a collaborative effort for the couple. Rees based his approach to the piece on his experience playing the title role in the epic 1980 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Nicholas Nickleby. Comparing photos of Rees’ staging and what director and choreographer Michael Berresse has so winningly crafted at Weston, the aim was replication rather than innovation, and that is just fine.
What is unique to Weston is the magnificent cast…I should back-up and do a little history of the play and a plot synopsis for you here. This is an origin story for J. M.Barrie’s Peter Pan, telling how Peter came to Neverland, acquired his eternal youth, ability to fly, cohort of Lost Boys and Tinkerbell, and, of course, his arch nemesis, Captain Jas. Hook. But it is also a ripping good yarn in and of itself, and Peter is not the hero. That job falls to Molly Aster (Molly Hemingway), an apprentice Starcatcher. Molly and her nanny Mrs. Bumbrake (Tom Aulino), and Peter (Adam Shonkwiler) – who is nameless at first – and two of his fellow orphans, the ambitious Prentiss (Max Sheldon) and the ravenous Ted (Devin Johnson), find themselves sailing towards the island of Rundoon aboard the Neverland with a trunk full of priceless starstuff thought to be aboard the Wasp with Molly’s father, Lord Leonard Aster (John Leonard Thompson). The dastardly pirate Black Stache (Matthew Wilkas) wants the treasure, and the first act comprises the pursuit and naval battle for the trunk, culminating in the Neverland’s shipwreck on Mollusk Island.
The island is inhabited by the Mollusks, whose leader, Fighting Prawn (Tom Souhrada) has nothing but contempt for the British who kidnapped and enslaved him in his youth. The Mollusk’s worship an enormous crocodile named Mr. Grin, to whom the attempt to feed Molly, Peter, and the boys, who are still trying to rescue and protect that trunk full (so they believe) of starstuff. But in the shipwreck the seawater has dissolved the starstuff – turning all the coastal fish into mermaids – and when Black Stache finally opens the trunk it is empty, causing him to slam it in frustration and…well, you’ll just have to go see the show.
Not mentioned in the synopsis are the remaining members of the all-male ensemble (Hemingway is the only woman in the cast) – John E. Brady, who plays Mrs. Bumbrake’s lost interest, Alf; Matt Gibson, who plays the captain of the Neverland and Fighting Prawn’s son, Hawking Clam; Raphael Peacock, who plays Captain Scott; and Michael Mendez, who plays, of course, Smee. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love Smee? And Mendez is one of the most delightful ones I have ever seen, even if he doesn’t sew.
While each actor is associated with a specific character, they all take a hand at everything. There is never a moment in Berresse’s staging when all hands aren’t on deck creating some marvelous stage illusion or another, and these on stage marvels are crafted largely through obvious human endeavor, although they are greatly aided by Timothy R. Mackabee’s nicely crammed playground of a set, Seth Reiser’s cinematic lighting design which allows for close-ups and nice dark corners in which to hide, and Ed Chapman’s Foleyesque sound design. While Peter and the Starcatcher is not a musical, there is a musical score and there are songs by Wayne Barker – notably a rousing Act II opener sung by a chorus of mermaids (remember, there is only one woman in the cast) – and for that there are musical director Max Grossman on keyboard and Jeremy Yaddaw on percussion, although I could have sworn there was a full pit orchestra at times.
I am something of a Peter Pan fanatic, and I have to say I was not overly excited by Barry and Pearson’s novel, opting not to read the three sequels (do prequels have sequels?) they have produced. But Peter and the Starcatcher is a horse of a different color. Barrie first wrote Peter Pan for the stage in 1904, but then he never stopped rewriting it. He novelized it under the title Peter and Wendy in 1911, but no script was published until 1928. This was a story that lived deep inside the man, and it evolved as his relationship with Sylvia and Arthur Llewelyn-Davies and their five boys changed. Between the first performance in 1904, less than a month after Sylvia gave birth to her fifth son, to the publication of the script in 1928 Barrie had seen Sylvia (43), Arthur (44), and two of their sons, George (21) and Michael (20), for whom he became legal guardian, dead and buried. It is no wonder then that the story morphed over that quarter century from a comic fairy play about the innocent fun of childhood to a tragedy on the theme of loss.
Ellice clearly understands these shifting moods and the importance of the mother figure in Barrie’s writing. Barrie idolized his mother and wrote a biography of her, but they were both haunted by the death at age 14 of Barrie’s older brother, David. Ellice has Peter and Molly both aged 13 here, the perfect tipping point between childhood and adolescence, although considerably older than Barrie’s Peter, who still has his baby teeth, and Wendy, who is clearly tween not teen.
It is always tricky having Peter Pan played by an adult man. Barrie was firm that the role should always be played by a female, but that rule has been broken many times over in recent years. Still, it is one of the trickiest things a mature actor can attempt, and so it is not surprising that Shonkwiler’s Peter is the least successful characterization among the leads. He says he is a boy and that he wants to stay one, but everything about him screams adult, and his angst is decidedly adolescent, a territory the real Peter would never dare to tread.
On the other hand Hemingway’s broadly British Molly is every inch a real-live 13 year old girl, right down to her irksome training bra. When Barry and Pearson granted the stage rights to Ellice, their only request was that they keep the character of Molly strong because they wrote the novel for their daughters. She is not just strong, she is Amazonian! And Hemingway lifts up the whole of this hefty adventure and spins it deftly on her index finger like the most experienced of Harlem Globetrotters. She perfectly captures all of Molly’s adolescent insecurities and loneliness amidst her very real intellectual and athletic accomplishments. Ellice has Molly frequently admonish herself in tight situations to “Be a woman” which is just a revelatory statement when the word “woman” is still considered an insult to many.
The star turn in any production of Peter and the Starcatcher is the scenery-chewing role of Black Stache. He has much less in common with Barrie’s Jas. Hook than with Kevin Kline’s Pirate King in Wil Leach’s 1981 Broadway production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, but who doesn’t want to be as funny as Kevin Kline? Wilkas certainly is hilarious, milking every bit of slapstick humor to its fullest while still finding all the wit in Ellice’s word play. He is most ably abetted by Mendez as Smee, and the two make a perfect comic duo.
A truly delightful side-story concerns the romance between Rose’s nanny Mrs. Bumbrake and the sailor Alf. Aulino is a long-time Weston star – I am still laughing at his breathtaking performance opposite Sam Lloyd, Jr. in The Mystery of Irma Vep, and that was 15 years ago! – and here the mere addition of a mob cap to his Mister Rogers ensemble of slacks and a cardigan turns him from man to maidservant, except for the one scene in which an enormous mermaid’s tale allows him to play Teacher to Peter. Aulino and Brady pop up in odd corners throughout the play, adding moments of side-splitting hilarity and a touch of unconventional romance to the ongoing adventures of the young people.
I cannot think why Weston has given Peter and the Starcatcher such a short run, but it is only there until July 25, so please HURRY and get tickets. While this is certainly a family friendly show, it is not suitable for very young children. Amidst the very physical low-comedy of the staging, which little ones may find scary, there is the very high comedy of Ellice’s script, which they won’t understand at all. Everyone ten and older will adore this show, however, and even the persnicketiest of Peter Pan purists, like yours truly, will be enchanted. Clap if you believe…
The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company presents Peter and the Starcatcher, Play by Rick Ellice, Music by Wayne Barker, Directed and Choreographed by Michael Berresse; Music Director – Max Grossman; Set Design – Timothy R. Mackabee; Lighting Design – Seth Reiser; Sound Design – Ed Chapman; Costume Design – Leon Dobkowski; Stage Manager – Martin Lechner.Cast: Tom Aulino – Mrs. Bumbrake/Teacher; John E. Brady – Alf; Rose Hemingway – Molly; Matt Gibson – Slank/Hawking Clam; Devin Johnson – Ted; Michael Mendez – Smee; Raphael Peacock – Captain Scott; Max Sheldon – Prentiss; Adam Shonkwiler – Boy (Peter); Tom Souhrada – Grempkin/Mack/Sanchez/Fighting Prawn; John Leonard Thompson – Lord Aster; Matthew Wilkas – Black Stache. Two hours and 20 minutes with one 15 minute intermission. July 16-25, 2015. At The Weston Playhouse, 703 Main Street, Weston, VT. www.westonplayhouse.org 802-824-5288.