From national tours to college productions, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to catch “Peter and the Starcatcher” at Connecticut theaters in recent years. Playhouse on Park’s rendition, glowing like star stuff in West Hartford through Oct. 14, feels different.
This fantastical tale of lost boys and their powerful female friend being pursued by pirates is not propelled, as many productions of “Starcatcher” are, by cheap gags and loud hammy acting. This one sails steadily onward, striking an even tone.
There’s plenty of humor, and Matthew Quinn’s villainous Black Stache (a pre-hooked Captain Hook) is as giddily over-the-top as you’ll find anywhere. There are swashbuckling sword fights and athletic leaps and bounds. There are awful puns. But what stands out in this Neverland excursion is the measured, well-told, easy-to-follow story of a boy growing up and finding a family.
That story, in the wrong hands, can be as winding and seemingly directionless as the journey of the play’s two tempest-tossed ships: the noble British naval vessel The Neverland and a dastardly pirate ship called The Wasp. Each carries a trunk; one is filled with a magical treasure, the other is not. Which ship has the valuable cargo? And what does it really matter? Numerous plot twists demonstrate that magic can appear randomly from a number of places. Keeping up is barely worth the effort.
All the digressions and boring bits mean that the storytelling style, and the characters telling that story, can be infinitely more important than the story itself. Besides its convoluted plot, “Peter and the Starcatcher” plays the “Wicked” game of providing a comic backstory for how legendary storybook characters got that way. How did Peter Pan get his name? How did Captain Hook get his hook? Why is this girl Molly acting so much like the girl we know as Wendy?
This sort of reverse-engineering can have limited appeal, as the millions of moviegoers who didn’t care to learn how Han Solo made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs (in the summer nonhit “Solo”) will attest. Yet another reason a measured, composed, multilayered presentation makes a great deal of sense. Those “surprise” revelations about obvious characteristics of universally popular characters are fun as intermittent jokes, but you can’t hang a whole show on them.
The Playhouse on Park “Peter and the Starcatcher” eschews cartooniness and one-off jokes for a more realistic tone. The set is wooden and shadowy. The songs are mostly chanted, with simple keyboard accompaniment. Even when they morph into choreographed song-and-dance numbers they still have a loose, raw feel that’s more “Threepenny Opera” than “Finding Neverland.” The shows that this Playhouse version most reminded me of were some of the vibrant ensemble storytelling shows brought to New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas over the years, like The National Theatre of Scotland’s “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.”
There’s a true ensemble feel to this “Peter and the Starcatcher,” aided by the fact that most of the cast has worked at Playhouse on Park before. Colleen Welsh and James Fairchild, who play the conniving couple of Mrs. Bumbrake and Alf, for instance, were both in “Avenue Q” at the playhouse a year ago, while Natalie Sannes (who makes for a most ingratiating Molly Aster) and Brianna Bagley (in the male role of Lost Boy Prentiss) were both in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” in 2014. It’s equally fitting that some of the older or most outsider characters are played by Playhouse on Park first-timers: Matthew Quinn (who’s played Captain Hook in both “Finding Neverland” and the Disney cruise ship show “Villains Tonight”) as Black Stache and James Patrick Nelson as Molly’s dad Lord Leonard.
Flying above them all, figuratively speaking (this is a grounded prequel) is Jared Starkey, who has the ideal boyish glint in his eye and matinee-idol square jaw to play Boy, the boy who will be Peter Pan.
All told, there’s a busy cast of 12 handling dozens of roles, from sailors and pirates to clams, prawns and mermaids. Refreshingly, roles have been found for several women, in a show that has only two main female characters (one of which is usually, but not here, played by a man in drag). There’s also a heartening attempt at racial diversity in the cast, though there’s still no way that the tropical island natives in any version of “Peter Pan” don’t come off as distressing racial stereotypes.
There are atrocious British accents throughout, but they’re strangely acceptable in a show that sets itself up as an exercise in peppy play-acting.
The script’s incessant need to please, with a joke or a song or a new plot twist every minute or so — in a show that lasts more than two hours plus an intermission — can get tiring. Thank goodness for director Sean Harris firm hand at the tiller of this akilter vessel, guiding it gracefully so that there are calm moments amid the storms of merriment.
I found myself leaning forward and listening in more than I have at jokier renditions of this show, which is in fact open to being interpreted in a multitude of different ways.
“Peter and the Starcatcher” is a show you can happily visit over and over, the way you can happily listen to different people tell you the same story. This version is not as wacky or blazing-colorful as others. Instead, it’s charming and nice. Clap if you believe in that.
PETER AND THE STARCATCHER runs through Oct. 14 at Playhouse on Park, 244 Park Road, West Hartford. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $50, $35 to $45 for students and seniors. 860-523-5900, playhouseonpark.org.
