Theatre in Review: Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop)

"Are we quite done with the hugging and the learning?" This question is posed near the end of Peter and the Starcatcher; it's meant as a gag line, but it goes right to the heart of the identity crisis plaguing the new production at New York Theatre Workshop. Commissioned by Disney Theatricals, it is about as far as you can get from the existing Disney model. Gone are the odes to family values, the bombastic spectacle, and the uplifting anthems. (This one isn't even really a musical, despite the odd song here and there.) Instead, Peter and the Starcatchers is a rough-and-ready piece of story theatre, a yarn stuffed to the gills with plot twists and self-reflexive gags. It's certainly different -- but whether it's an improvement is open to debate.

Based on a novel -- the first in a series -- by the humorist Dave Barry and the suspense author Ridley Pearson, Peter and the Starcatcher is meant to do for Peter Pan what Wicked does for The Wizard of Oz -- provide a subversive back-story designed to spark the interest of modern kids in the source material. The narrative offers plenty of everything, often served up in pairs. There are two sailing ships, two sets of pirates, two heinous villains, two sets of coveted cargo, and two budding romances -- one for the tweeners and one for the middle-aged. Additional features include a trio of shanghaied orphans, a chorus of masculine-looking mermaids, an extremely hungry crocodile, and a tribe of savages known as the Mollusks. All of this is deployed in the telling of an incredibly convoluted tale.

Those two ships are bound for the mythical kingdom of Rundoon. Sailing separately are Lord Aster and Molly, his barely adolescent daughter. In addition to being pillars of the empire, Aster and Molly are starcatchers -- meaning they are charged with gathering up "starstuff," which occasionally falls from the heavens, and dispatching it into a volcano on Rundoon before it wreaks havoc on humankind. (It endows them with super powers and, in the past, has often fallen into the wrong hands.) Thanks to those two pirate mutinies, the trunks filled with starstuff are let loose and Molly resolves to get them back. She teams up with three orphans who have been kidnapped and shipped to Rundoon for lives of slavery; one of them -- he will later be known as Peter -- becomes her confederate in the quest. Along the way, they tangle with the villainous Black Stache, a facially hirsute fiend who twists his words and has an assistant named Smee. Three guesses as to who he will become.

There's so much going on in Peter and the Starcatcher that simply keeping track of the plot can be a chore; it doesn't help that a great heaping hunk of exposition is delivered in a rush at the top of the show by the entire cast, speaking directly to the audience. But there's a more fundamental problem: In dispensing with typical Disney sentimentality, Rick Elice, the adaptor, hasn't given us a single reason to care about these characters and their involved storyline. Instead, he has taken a gag-a-minute approach -- and most of them aren't too fresh. It's difficult to get involved in the narrative when you're being distracted every few minutes by warmed-over jokes about Sarah Palin and Sally Field. (Really, aren't we about two decades past the point where someone saying, "You like me! You really like me!" is funny?) Other running gags -- the entire cast bleating "God save her" every time Queen Victoria is mentioned, for example - are simply run into the ground. All of this lends an air of self-congratulation that makes Peter and the Starcatcher awfully hard to like, if you're not a hyperactive 12-year-old boy.

The show has been co-directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, and the hokey, self-referential tone is extremely reminiscent of the latter's staging of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. But where that musical spoof was amusing and grating in equal measures, Peter and the Starcatcher is mostly grating. Your reaction to it will probably depend on your reaction to Christian Borle's performance as Black Stache -- it's either a tour de force of comic hamming or a disconnected series of over-the-top gestures that don't coalesce into anything like a coherent characterization. Personally, I kept waiting for him to get a little too close to that crocodile. Neither Wayne Barker's music nor Steven Hoggett's minimal musical staging make much of an impression.

Celia Keenan-Bolger, the only female member of the cast, is appealing as Molly; her deadpan approach to the wildest plot twist is refreshing, given all the winking and nudging going on around her. Similarly. Adam Chandler-Berat gives Peter a welcome touch of sincerity; it's too bad that they don't have any scenes that effectively explore their growing affection for each other. Arnie Burton, whose sketch-comedy bona fides are beyond reproach, does his best as Molly's nanny, although it's never clear why this is a drag role. Karl Kenzler is staunch as Lord Aster and Kevin Del Aguila is occasionally amusing as Smee, the real brains behind Black Stache.

At least, the production benefits from a highly original design. Donyale Werle, who transformed the Royale Theatre beyond recognition for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, here covers the NYTW stage with a faded Victorian proscenium and purple swagged drapes; the first act unfolds on a nearly bare stage populated by a couple of trunks and indefinite scenic pieces; the second act, set on a South Pacific island, is like a child's-eye view of Gauguin, with the stage wrapped in translucent blue-green drops. Jeff Croiter's lighting design may be the very best of his career; his ability to alter the mood on stage, almost second by second, through changes of color, intensity, and angle, is almost miraculous. Paloma Young's costumes have an amusingly raffish feel, especially when that mermaid chorus appears -- one of them has a pair of colanders for breasts. Darron L. West's sound design includes underwater bubbles, jungle sounds, and an old-fashioned thunder sheet.

The biggest identity issue facing Peter and the Starcatcher is this: Who is this show really for? Despite considerable evidence that it is meant for all ages, it's hard to see it gaining much traction with the post-pubescent set. In its relentlessly giggly approach, it is more reminiscent of the Disney Channel sitcoms -- That's So Raven or The Suite Life of Cody and Zach -- than anything in Peter Pan. In the last ten minutes, the story tries to approach the tragic underpinnings of the J. M. Barrie original, but it's too little, too late. This is children's theatre -- no adults need apply.--David Barbour