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Peter and the Starcatcher
Nov. 21st, 2016 05:01 pmI noticed a poster the other day advertising a production of "Peter and the Starcatcher" at Bedford High School. I had considered going to NYC to see it several years ago. It won a handful of Tony awards in 2012. This is pretty fast to have a Broadway show licensed for high school groups, and I was intrigued. I went to the Sunday matinee, unfortunately showing up a little over an hour early, having misread the poster. Fortunately, many of the Bedford Ma town buildings are in a cluster, so I spent the intervening time at the library, right next door. Maybe because it was a matinee, there were lots and lots of kids, a few as young as preschoolers. P and the S is in essence a (non-Barrie) prequel for "Peter Pan." I think PP is kind of creepy, but it has had a 112 year career of parents taking children to see it, so the audience shouldn't have been surprising.
The Broadway cast had only one female actor (there are two main female characters plus briefly some others, the identity of whom would be a spoiler). That really wouldn't do for a high school. There were eighteen players, including a lot of girls playing male parts, but everyone also portrayed animals, furniture, chorus members,and other things, as needed. There was a terrific four person band/sound effects group. True to the original production, there were almost no props, there was flying using imagination rather than rigging, no scrim, but there were lighting effects. I tend to dislike the headpiece microphones used in high school productions, and as usual, there was at least one not working well, but all the performances were skilled, all the singing sounded good (it's not exactly a musical, but there are some songs), and the simple/cheap costumes were certainly good enough. If I had seen it on the first day instead of the last, I would have tried to get other people to go see it. I am content to have seen local teenagers put on a show rather than feeling left out for having not seen it on Broadway.
The Broadway cast had only one female actor (there are two main female characters plus briefly some others, the identity of whom would be a spoiler). That really wouldn't do for a high school. There were eighteen players, including a lot of girls playing male parts, but everyone also portrayed animals, furniture, chorus members,and other things, as needed. There was a terrific four person band/sound effects group. True to the original production, there were almost no props, there was flying using imagination rather than rigging, no scrim, but there were lighting effects. I tend to dislike the headpiece microphones used in high school productions, and as usual, there was at least one not working well, but all the performances were skilled, all the singing sounded good (it's not exactly a musical, but there are some songs), and the simple/cheap costumes were certainly good enough. If I had seen it on the first day instead of the last, I would have tried to get other people to go see it. I am content to have seen local teenagers put on a show rather than feeling left out for having not seen it on Broadway.
