A Trip to Neverland

Human imagination is the ultimate creative instrument and Peter and the Starcatcher is an ultimate vehicle for displaying it.  No high-tech or Photoshop, no flying monkeys or synthesizers, just an incredible display of stagecraft transports theatregoers to imaginary landscapes in this Tony award winning production.    Peter and the Starcatcher originally came to New York in an Off-Broadway production, moved to Broadway long enough to win a Tony, and has now returned to the more intimate venue of the Off-Broadway New World Stages.  It's come home. 

The opening number immediately sucked me into this strange and starlit world from my 5th row center seat.  Twelve talented actors, accompanied only by a piano and drum, introduce us to many of the almost 100 characters they will play in the course of the production.  Emoting incredible energy and personality, every actor entered enthusiastically into the fast-moving production.  Lengths of rope became the boundaries of small rooms, model ships became rolling galleons, kitchen instruments became mermaid breasts, and stardust pervaded everything.

The story revolves around a nameless orphan who longs to fly, who disdains "grown-ups," and who morphs into Peter Pan of Neverland, fighting Captain Hook, avoiding a ticking crocodile, flying about his island and never growing up.  Like the landscape of Oz, Neverland is a shared landscape, shared only in the imagination.  It's impossible to describe this show other than to say it offers the best of theatricality.  The only thing I can compare it to is the Telluride Squids Clown Show last summer, a cacophony of action coalescing into a meaningful whole.  You're not exactly sure what you saw after it's over, but you know you've experienced something, and that is exactly what the theatre is all about...experience!