Projo on Trinity Rep

""Whenever I've flown in my dreams," she said, "it's fast."

The idea of swinging and twirling on ropes came from discussions with dance companies that use aerial work and circus routines. New York dancer-choreographer Andrew Pacho, a consultant for the show, was among the most helpful.

The New York contacts led to a couple of accomplished acrobats joining the cast. Pacho's assistant Darrell Autor appears in assorted roles, and Rosemarie Mallare is the character formerly known as Tiger Lily, now called just Tiger."

I can't believe its still on the web, yeah! This is the link,
http://www.projo.com/theater/content/projo_20020421_peterpan.2cafd.html

...and here's the whole text:

Neverland for everyone
04/21/2002

BY CHANNING GRAY
Journal Arts Writer


Trinity hopes to enchant both adults and kids with its Peter Pan
You're 10 years old and invincible. And your greatest pleasure is lofting as high as possible on the backyard swing -- then leaping into the blur of sky and trees. For an instant of terror and joy, you're free.

It is this magical feeling that director Amanda Dehnert has tried to bring to Trinity Rep's Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, which opens Friday.

Don't, in other words, expect actors swooping above the stage in harnesses a la Cathy Rigby. In the Neverland of Trinity Rep, flying is a more a state of mind, a wondrous place that we've all visited, but as busy, beleaguered adults, forgotten.

Wouldn't it be nifty, thought Dehnert, who is all of 29, to let audiences revisit that wondrous state found in the minds of the young and innocent?

"When you go to the theater," she said, "you know it's a story. But you experience real emotions.

"We want to stretch those emotional muscles, to expand the audience's ability to dream and imagine, to walk that line between fantasy and reality."

Don't worry. Not all is left to the imagination.

A chain of actors forms the fearsome croc in pursuit of Fred Sullivan's Captain Hook. The creature's gnashing jaws are fashioned from 5-foot-long rusty saw blades; the tail is an actor dragged backward, cracking a whip.

And while the cast won't be soaring above the stage like the ghosts who haunt Trinity's Christmas Carol, they will clamber about on ropes. David Jenkins has come up with a set resembling a circus big top. A half-dozen ropes -- some of which are raised and let down during the play -- dangle from the lighting grid. Peter, Wendy, John and Michael (wearing safety gear) shinny up the knotted lines and are twirled around by cast members on the ground.

"They spin very, very fast," said Dehnert, talking above the whir of drills and saws as sets for the production were being built last week in Trinity's upstairs theater.

"There is a feeling of danger, speed and uncontrolledness to it."

The cast -- Trinity regulars and some New York imports -- have spent two or three days a week for the past month working out at Ocean State School of Gymnastics in Smithfield, getting down their routines.

Dehnert considered a lot of options when it came to flying.

The original story by Scottish journalist and playwright J.M. Barrie doesn't make a lot of specific references to flight, she said. But, face it, an earth-bound Peter Pan would be a like staging Moby Dick without a whale.

Dehnert considered having the airborne cast members lifted off the floor by other actors, just as dancers are. But that seemed too tame. She wanted the audience to experience "freedom and velocity."

"Whenever I've flown in my dreams," she said, "it's fast."

The idea of swinging and twirling on ropes came from discussions with dance companies that use aerial work and circus routines. New York dancer-choreographer Andrew Pacho, a consultant for the show, was among the most helpful.

The New York contacts led to a couple of accomplished acrobats joining the cast. Pacho's assistant Darrell Autor appears in assorted roles, and Rosemarie Mallare is the character formerly known as Tiger Lily, now called just Tiger.

In Dehnert's production, Barrie's cartoonish Indians have been transformed into a band of "good-guy" guardians, which is sort of their role in the original, she said, once stripped of their ugly stereotypes.

Reworking the story

It was Fred Sullivan -- who often seems, at least on stage, to be a boy who refuses to grow up -- who first pushed for the company to do Peter Pan. A couple of years ago, as the season was being decided, Oskar Eustis decided it was time.

But what version to do?

Barrie's original story was penned in 1903, but reworked as a novel, and later a 1920 screenplay meant to have starred Charlie Chaplin as Peter. Most audiences know the musical version that starred Mary Martin on TV, or the animated Disney classic.

Trinity opted for an adaptation from the 1980s by Trevor Nunn and John Caird that draws on an array of sources -- Barrie's playscripts, the movie scenario and the novel. The final scene, in which Peter meets a grown-up Wendy, was taken from the novel and a miscellaneous scene that Barrie wrote in 1907 and that saw the light of day just once, in 1908. This will be the East Coast premiere of the Nunn-Caird version.

Dehnert, who plays the piano, among other instruments, wrote melodies for a couple of songs -- a sort of generic children's lullaby and a rollicking pirate tune. But that's the extent of the music.

Jenkins has transformed Trinity's Chace Theater into the land of pirates, fairies and the insatiable ticking croc. Actors scurry along catwalks atop the grid and down onto a spacious landing above the main stage.

But no area is designated as the nursery, say, or Peter's lair. This is a play, you will recall, that takes place in the mind of the beholder.

Props and costumes have been kept to a minimum, with just enough information to suggest a flight of fancy.

Dehnert's vision is not unlike that of youngsters exploring the contents of an attic trunk, creating a fantasy world from its keepsakes and castaway clothing. Forget the fancy duds for the pirates. At Trinity, the scallywags who hang out with Hook wear shirts made from billowing ladies' bloomers.

No kids in cast

Besides Sullivan in the role of Hook, Mauro Hantman plays Peter; Rachael Warren, Wendy. Kalani Queypo, a Trinity newcomer, and conservatory grad Mark Sutch are John and Michael.

Another 18 performers play the pirates, boys and assorted other characters. They also change sets and do whatever is needed to keep the show afloat. While the production would seem to lend itself to youngsters sprinkled among the cast, Dehnert said it's physically too demanding for kids. The youngest performer is 16.

Dehnert admits to mixed feelings when handed this project 18 months ago -- from "exciting, challenging, great" to "no way, can't do, not a clue." Her own exposure to past stagings and film versions was limited. But she did love to leap from the swing in the backyard of her childhood home in Illinois.

And she felt it was important to strip away the Disney-esque trappings and get to the heart of Barrie's original tale -- albeit with the kind of fresh approach that Trinity has come to be known for in tackling standards such as The Music Man and My Fair Lady.

Trinity, of course, is also looking at the potential for attracting an audience of both children and adults -- adults, that is, who have refused to grow up.

Peter Pan opens Friday and runs through June 9 at Trinity Rep, 201 Washington St. Tickets are $29-$45, with discounts for seniors, students and groups. Call 351-4242.