Capitol Theatre, February 2
7.5/10
The trick is to see this through an eight-year-old’s eyes. Luckily, I mostly operate with a 10-year-old’s mentality, which is close enough, so can tell you that sitting through the duller parts is worth it, because the second half becomes seriously funny. The pity is that by then some of the younger kids were getting sleepy, given the 140-minute length (including interval).
The play’s worlds are created much as children create make-believe games, with minimal concreteness and maximum imagination. Two planks held vertically can signal a door, and just a spoked wooden wheel shouts “ship”. Then there’s the clever stuff that grown-ups can do, like make ingenious puppets of a cat, dog, crocodile, birds and fish, whether more or less literally.
Peter and the Starcatcher is a 2009 US play by Rick Elice (based on a novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson), which serves as a prequel to JM Barrie’s Peter and Wendy. This Dead Puppet Society production, directed by David Morton, inserted local flavour into some gags, added technical flourishes, and fleshed out the original music (although it’s definitely a play with music rather than a musical).
It has a cast of 12 (who sometimes assist the three on-stage musicians), minimal scenery and a sackful of magic tricks to join the comedy. The humour is calibrated to catch all age groups, as it ranges from fart jokes and pantomime routines to having a missing trunk described as being “as elusive as a melody in a Philip Glass opera”. For those with longer memories, some of the silliness is reminiscent of The Goodies.
Otis Dhanji plays a spiky, wary unnamed orphan, dismissively called Boy, who, as the story unfolds, gains the name and powers of Peter Pan, with a little help from Teacher (John Batchelor) an outrageously Scottish mermaid. Paul Capsis is hilarious as the nasty Bill Slank and others, and Olivia Deeble delivers some acrobatic surprises while portraying the relentless jollity and bossiness of Molly, Wendy’s putative forebear.
Ryan Gonzalez enjoys one of the zaniest characters in Fighting Prawn, an Italian cook out for revenge after suffering ignominy in English kitchens, and Lucy Goleby delights as Mrs Bumbrake, Molly’s licentious nanny, while the rest of cast (including Alison Whyte and Peter Helliar) maintain the ham standard. Colin Lane (Of Lano and Woodley fame), skewers many of the best lines as pirate captain Black Stache, and has a winning way with the audience.
If the first half began to wear, with a surfeit of shouting relative to laughs, act two had wings from the get-go, and not just in terms of comedy and tighter story-telling. Now the magic and the images taking shape became more fantastic and transformative, and, wonder of wonders, the show could change gear in a finger-snap and give you an odd cramp in the heart region. But be quick: it’s only on until February 9.
https://www.capitoltheatre.com.au/peter-and-the-starcatcher/