Hawker College is in the throes of staging its big annual show, Peter and the Starcatcher, a prequel to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, reports HELEN MUSA.

Hawker College is in the throes of staging its big annual show, Peter and the Starcatcher and an enterprising student recently invited me along to watch a rehearsal where they were blocking the last scene.

I’d not seen a production of this play, a prequel to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, and when I got there, drama teacher Sian Harrington was busy putting a double cast of 26 actors through their paces while a crew of 15 sorted out the technicalities.

It proved to be an uproarious afternoon of black humour and dad jokes, which the cast thought their dads would definitely enjoy, as the energetic actors worked out how to walk like a pirate, how to upstage your mates and in one scary scene, how to seem to have your arm chopped off on stage.

Of that, when bosun Smee declares that he is the pirate captain‘s right hand man, his boss’s response is, “not any more.” 

“Oh captain, my captain,” Smee laments. 

This kind of verbal horseplay is calculated to keep all ages amused and to tickle the intellect of senior students. 

Briefly, the incredibly complicated plot takes us to the point where the lonely protagonist, Boy, is given his name Peter. 

Peter and the Starcatcher, adapted by Rick Elice from the 2004 novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, follows Boy and three orphan boys, on a ship called the Never Land. 

On board, they cross paths with Lord Aster’s daughter Molly, who is guarding a trunk of magical “starstuff”, protected by Starcatchers from the evil pirate Black Stache.

Just as the play is a prequel, so are some of the characters. An exception is the bumbling person First Mate, Smee, but Captain Hook is still in the making and this play’s wisecracking smarty-pants pirate is called Black Stache, who proudly boasts: “I can still win Wimbledon with one hand.“

In the part of rehearsal I saw, there was no visible appearance by Mr Grin, the crocodile but the technical team, headed up by Andrew Campbell, had worked up a terrifying soundtrack suggesting that the notoriously greedy reptile was not far off. 

All the cast, Campbell told me, would be mic’d up for the actual performance.

As in the old pantomime, the main stand-off is between Peter and Black Stache, although in an affectionate moment, the villain says to Boy/Peter: “You’re the yin to my yang; the semi to my colon” and suggests, “what say we merge a forger?” [forge a merger].

All this fun presents a lot of challenges for Harrington and her cast. Most of the actors have to play up to five different roles, and the nasty captain Bill Slank doubles as Mollusk Island’s chief, Fighting Prawn. 

The double casting ensures that there are always understudies on hand. Campbell and his team handle sound effects, but also music to help with scene transitions, although it is most definitely not a musical.

The set sounds daunting, with Act I set in the bowels of a ship, Act II in tropical locations and a collision at sea, but in fact the approach is imaginative, with the cast grabbing branches to suggest lush jungle and other such theatrical devices.

As for the significance of the magical starstuff and the Starcatchers, you’ll just have to be there to find out.

Peter and the Starcatcher, Murranji Theatre, Hawker, September 25-26.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.