Reviewers are by nature a skeptical bunch, so when former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby announced ― some 22 years ago ― that she was reinventing herself as a musical theater performer and taking to the skies as Peter Pan, it seemed gimmick casting at best.
Undaunted by critical doubters, she took her craft seriously, training to be an actress as diligently as she did as an athlete. Now, a few tours later, as Rigby approaches 60, she arrives at the Kravis Center as a genuine larger-than-life, albeit pint-sized stage star, soaring once again as J.M. Barrie’s “boy who wouldn’t grow up.”
The musical role of Peter was tailored in 1954 for then reigning queen of Broadway, Mary Martin, but it fits Rigby even better. She is wholly persuasive as a tyke, with a boyish swagger and mischievous air. And when she flies, she adds flips, rolls and somersaults which convey the sheer joy of weightlessness.
Maybe all that could be expected, but Rigby also sings quite well, dances with abandon and, in the production number Ugg-a-Wugg ― the usually wince-inducing tribal Indian sequence ― she beats a drum with vigor and rhythm like a hybrid of Peter Pan and Stomp.
It is a good thing that Rigby is so charismatic as Peter, because the rest of the cast is rather pedestrian. Brent Barrett is a better singer than required for Peter’s nemesis, Captain Hook, but not enough of a natural comic. Most of the pirate schtick falls flat, and there is a lot of it. On the other hand, the Darling offspring ― Krista Buccellato, Cade Canon Ball and Julia Massey ― are up to snuff and their initial fairy dust-fueled levitation remains one of the most magical moments in musical theater annals.
The score, written by Carolyn Leigh and Moose Charlap, with substantial doctoring by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne, is infectiously playful. Expect songs such as I Gotta Crow, I’m Flying and I Won’t Grow Up to be rattling in your brain the next day.
Just as Rigby has managed to remain young along with Peter Pan, the show has a way of turning us all back into children for a couple of hours. Go ahead, try not to clap for Tinkerbelle when she needs the healing power of applause.
And whatever you do, do not sprint out of the Kravis Center as the show ends. You will miss one final spectacular flight by Rigby during her curtain call.
PETER PAN, Kravis Center Dreyfoos Hall, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday. Tickets: $25 and up. Call: (561) 832-7469.
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Just as Tom Stoppard assumed that his audience was well-enough versed in the details of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to understand the nuances and humor in his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Mad Cat Theatre’s Paul Tei and Jessica Farr make the same assumption with their post-modern deconstruction of the classic tragedy, The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show.
In case you were absent from class the day they speed-read through Hamlet, you are hereby advised to brush up on the play before attending or you will be hopelessly lost in this theatrical cornucopia of ideas, play fragments yanked into the 21st century, contemporary technology and tangential musings by Tei and Farr.
And while you are at it, do a little reading about Heiner Muller, the influential German dramatist and poet, who wrote his own post-modern take on the Bard’s play, Hamletmachine, and who is something of an emcee/guide through the Mad Cat epic. Have I scared you away from attending yet?
That would be unfortunate, because while some of the ambitious evening is fairly impenetrable, a lot of it is playful and thought-provoking. The Hamlet Dog and Pony Show may not be the company’s most accessible work ― at least on first encounter ― but it represents a bold reach into the cosmic void, a challenge for sure, which pays off in audience dividends more often than not.
While relatively faithful to the saga of a Danish prince intent on avenging the murder of his father, the king, events have been transported to the United States, where a catatonic Hamlet (brooding but well-spoken Troy Davidson) finds his widowed mother Gertrude (Carey Brianna Hart) suddenly married to his uncle, President Claudius (Ken Clement), the prime suspect in his dad’s death.
Clement also doubles as Polonius, father to Ophelia and Laertes, a neat feat made possible by the fact that the old man is represented by a hand puppet, manipulated and voiced by Clement in a Cuban accent. Wait, there’s more. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Erik Fabregat and Ralph de la Portilla), Hamlet’s college chums, appear on a projection screen thanks to Skype. And Muller (Farr in Kit Kat Club duds), checks in now and then with a few song solos, accompanied by a two-man band (Christopher Kent and Brian Sayre).
Tensions between Miami and Cuba come into play as do other contemporary references to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Julian Assange and the health care debate, all of which merely shortens the shelf life of this Dog and Pony Show.
Still, Tei directs the evening slyly, conjuring images which set the world of Hamlet on its ear. The play itself shreds the Shakespearean text, but listen up and you will hear most of the work’s most famous lines, puckishly set in different contexts.
No, not everything works in this 2-½ hour marathon, but it is refreshing to encounter a production that tries so much, attempting more rather than less. Yea, verily.
THE HAMLET DOG AND PONY SHOW, Mad Cat Theatre Company at Goldman Warehouse, 404 NW 26th St., Miami. Through Sunday, Aug. 12. Tickets: $25-$30. Call: (866) 811-4111.