<b>PETER AND THE STARCATCHER</b> Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Shaw Festival
Through November 1
PETER AND THE STARCATCHER Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival

By Augustine Warner

The Shaw Festival’s “Peter and the Starcatcher” is a triumph of style over substance and a great show.
If you think in Hollywood terms and the presence of Disney in originally putting this show together makes that inevitable, this is a prequel to “Peter Pan.”
Using the “Peter and the Starcatcher” novel from Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Rick Elice’s script and a giant production team, we learn the framework unveiled by J.M. Barrie in the classic novel of “the boy who never grew up.”
The team set the story in the same Victorian era of empire and then applied modern science fiction and even more modern stage techniques.
Then, they applied modern acting rules of each person playing many roles, if for no other reason than it saves money.
Of course the entire production mixes humor for the small people in the audience with jokes which go right over their heads, lots of really campy humor.
It’s hard to say if the kids like the show since there were so few the afternoon I saw it.
However, it’s clearly aimed at parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren.
If you have ever seen a British Christmas “panto,” you will get the sense of what’s on stage.
On a stage lined with 19th Century theater equipment, we learn about fragments of stars which fall on Earth and are handled by hereditary “starcatchers.”
Professional soldier Lord Aster (Patrick Galligan) is one and he’s training daughter Molly (Kate Besworth) for the same role.
They are heading off to some distant place with a volcano into which they can toss “star stuff.”
The “star stuff” is packed into a giant trunk and ready to go.
This is where the real tangles of the story start, since the slimy captain of the ship Molly is to sail on, Slank (Graeme Somerville), substitutes the chest with the treasure for one full of sand and the treasure goes on his ship and the sand trunk goes on a Royal Navy frigate with Lord Aster, on a faster voyage.
He’s also carrying what amount to orphan slaves from the London slums, carried in the bilges.
That’s not the only substitution since the crew of the frigate has been replaced by pirates under the flamboyant Black Stache (Martin Happer).
Both ships wind up marooned on an island when the weather goes bad.
In “Peter Pan,” there’s an island with Indians and swamp and a giant crocodile.
There is also the set of trunks.
In the end, Peter (Charlie Gallant) stays and talks of generations of young people brought to the island and the Indians make peace with the British Empire and Black Stache no longer has a right hand and the crocodile has swallowed a ticking clock.
All that may sound familiar.
This show is clearly important to the Shaw Festival, with Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell directing this show in the fairly intimate Royal George Theatre, clearly with a substantial budget.
Maxwell has some of the Shaw’s best performers, like Galligan, Somerville and Happer in major roles.
Kate Besworth is fairly young in the role of Molly but is strong in a character much more of a 21st Century woman than a character of the time of J.M. Barrie.
In smaller roles, there are nice performances from Jonathan Tan as Black Stache’s henchman Smee and Jenny L. Wright’s Mrs. Bumbrake, Molly’s nanny.
Maxwell keeps this show going headlong, probably important in a show with little substance, with the style important and that rush shows in the performances which don’t slow down and let the audience lose interest.
The show also has Judith Bowden’s wonderful set which can be the docks in London, either ship or the island.
There’s also Valerie Moore’s movement coaching which keeps the audience flowing across the stage.
“Peter and the Starcatcher” is one of those shows which you have to relax and let the ropes on stage reach out and drag you into the action and enjoy the voyage.
See it.