Enchantment is headed our way later this week when “Peter and the Starcatcher” opens at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Although the Tony-winning play has its roots in a story more than a century old about a boy who dodged growing up, it comes our way not by dint of pixie dust but by way of bold theatrical invention and, for a change, a prequel.
Before there was a darling girl named Wendy, a captain dubbed Hook and a fairy flitting about with the beguiling moniker Tinker Bell, an orphan boy called Peter set sail on the ramshackle vessel “Never Land.”
So goes the premise of the 2006 children’s adventure novel “Peter and the Starcatchers,” Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s prequel to J.M. Barrie’s 1911 novel “Peter Pan; Or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.”
“Peter and the Starcatchers” — which launched a series of books — is a roiling romp. And while it was easy for co-author and Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry to imagine that his and Pearson’s novel might find its way to Hollywood, Broadway was as far-fetched as, well, a fairy named Tinker Bell.
“I couldn’t envision taking this big, rollicking island adventure and doing it all on the stage,” Barry said on the phone recently. “What they did still astonishes me.”
“They” are writer Rick Elice ) and directors Roger Rees and Alex Timbers.
Barry was not alone in his awe. Last year, “Peter and the Starcatcher” was nominated for nine Tony Awards. It won five, including best performance by a featured actor for Black Stache portrayer, Christian Borle ).
Thursday, will launch the national tour of “Peter and the Starcatcher,” further advancing the city’s reputation as a very fine platform from which to send forth national tours of Broadway shows.
Story in local producer’s hands
“I’ve kept an eye on how beautiful downtown Denver has developed and how (the Denver Center) has been a great cornerstone of that,” says “Peter” producer Nancy Nagel Gibbs.
She should know. The former Coloradan and Thomas Jefferson High School graduate, has been able to take the measure of the town over the decades.
As a theatrical general manager (“Wicked,” “Next to Normal”), Gibbs has also worked closely with Randy Weeks, executive director for Denver Center Attractions. “He always knows what I’m working on way in advance,” said Gibbs, who brought to the Denver Center in 2011.
Even so, when she first mentioned the play, Weeks was doubtful. “We don’t really do plays,” she recalls him saying. (Denver Center Attractions almost exclusively mounts Broadway tours of musicals.)
“Peter and the Starcatcher,” however has proven a special case. Even more than ” the play Denver Center Attractions hosted at the Buell Theatre earlier this year, it calls upon the magic of theatrical invention to enthrall and thrill children and adults. Four of the play’s Tonys were for the way the stage is transformed into a fantasy realm: scenic, lighting, sound and costume design.
And, it likely doesn’t hurt matters that after its New York City performances, some audience members told Gibbs, “I loved your musical.”
Perhaps you’ve noticed that an “s” has gone missing in the journey of “Peter and the Starcatchers” from page to stage?
Blame — OK, thank — writer Elice for that.
As he worked on the play, he discovered, he was being too faithful to the novel, a not-uncommon hiccup for adaptations.
“Peter was essentially heroic from the very beginning,” Elice says. “Nothing happened to him except the events of the story. He was a leader, and he was feisty, and he was aggressive, and he was in charge.”
Watching a production of that version, he realized a problem: “I’m telling a hero’s journey story, but there’s no journey, ” says Elice.
He gave the boy — he doesn’t even have a name at the play’s start — an arc. He also gave him a counterpart, a privileged girl as disadvantaged — emotionally — as the boy.
“She’s alone. He’s alone. Through a chance meeting, this boy becomes Peter, and this girl becomes a starcatcher.” With that change, says Elice, “I realized I wasn’t writing a Joseph Campbell hero story, I was sort of writing a Joseph and Josephine journey. She’s as bereft of human companionship as this feral boy. That was very freeing — and it gave me the title.”
Elice went back to Disney; the company that owns the rights to Barry and Pearson’s series.
“All I want to do is drop the S,” he told them — and did.
“I was just awed by the whole process,” says Barry of the transformation of his and Pearson’s literary and irreverent children’s novel. Back in 2009 when the show was being workshopped at the La Jolla Playhouse, he and Pearson e-mailed very minor comments to Elice.
“Beyond that, it’s been basking,” Barry says. There’s been a lot of basking.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
“PETER AND THE STARCATCHER” A Denver Center Attractions production. Written by Rick Elice. Directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers. Featuring Joey deBettencourt, John Sanders, Megan Stern, Harter Clingman and Jimonn Cole. Aug. 15-Sept. 1. At the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 14th and Curtis streets. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Tickets $20-$105 via or 303-893-4100.
