Second Star To The Right

Everybody knows the story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up.

At least, everybody thinks they do.

Mark Shanahan, who is directing "Peter and the Starcatcher" for TheatreSquared, says there are "beautiful, sad, funny and scary" layers upon undiscovered layers in the Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of J.M. Barrie's turn-of-the-20th-century tale.

"Truly, it makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about Peter Pan," he says.

The "origin story," he says, reveals how "a boy with no name got the name Peter Pan and how Neverland came to be. It's all about storytelling," from the shipwreck where the tale is set to the props -- "everything is something that would be found at the bottom of the sea" -- to live-on-stage music and Foley effects performed by Jason Burrow and Cody Neilsen.

Shanahan, who first came to TheatreSquared to direct "Around the World in 80 Days," says putting a hundred characters on stage requires 12 talented performers who "never lost that sense of backyard acting. All a kid needs is a stick, and imagination does the rest." Throughout the rehearsal process, Shanahan and his cast -- made up of his colleagues from outside Northwest Arkansas and "the best actors" he has met here -- "have worked to endow each prop with exactly the kind of imaginative punch we want for it. We have to create crocodiles and birds and fairies and mermaids, and it has to be collaborative. What you want is everyone's imagination at work."

Steve Pacek, a newcomer to TheatreSquared but an old friend of Shanahan's, portrays Peter.

"The challenges? It's a character most people are going to understand becomes Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is so specifically carved out in people's minds and memories and imaginations," he says. "I'm kind of playing a different side of him, someone you don't think could grow up to become Peter Pan. It's that part of the story that will surprise people. He's an orphan, and he's not a happy little guy. So you understand how he got to be the way he is. It's very different from what people expect.

"But I love that as an actor! It's so delicious when you get to think of all the possibilities that could be instead of what's expected!"

Shanahan agrees there is a darker side to the story.

"Peter, for all of his careless joy and fantasies of flying, battles as much with loneliness and childhood fears as he does with pirates," he writes in his director's notes. "His primal dread at growing up, facing responsibilities and mortality, taps into that confusion which comes with entering adulthood.

"Scholars often note that Barrie hinted at Peter being a spirit, perhaps a ghost of a child who has passed on and has been charged with accompanying other lost children into the afterlife."

If that seems a dauntingly serious topic for a holiday play, Shanahan is quick to add that some sadness -- "the best part of it, wistful and beautiful" -- comes with the season.

"There are lonely and scary times in life, but friendship and adventure really make it worthwhile," he says.

Another newcomer, Hugh Kennedy -- whose primary character is Black Stache -- says that's just a tiny piece of his job. He is also "random orphans, pirates, narrators, sailors and seamen. We actually all play environments, too: waves, trees, rain in the jungle, it's all fair game. Mollusks. Prawns and mermaids. It's madness. It's organized chaos. It's sophisticated make-believe.

"I hope they are rollicked with laughter," he says of the audience. "I hope they delight in the storytelling. I hope the characters remind them of people they know in real life, and I hope they're encouraged to come back and feel at home seeing more shows at TheatreSquared.

NAN What's Up on 12/04/2015