Peter and the Starcatcher sails into port with a dash of irreverence

Silly, fantastical and irreverent, Peter and the Starcatcher is a smart theatrical romp sailing with a cargo of unending verbal and physical mischief.

Running until Sunday, April 23 at the Citadel Theatre, the two-hour-plus production is the latest offering to fill the canon of Peter Pan lore first created by J. M. Barrie in 1902.

Adapted by Rick Elice from Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s 2004 children’s novel, it explains how an anguished orphan becomes the immortal Peter Pan.

The prequel is part rollicking high seas adventure, part first love, part coming of age story, and is presented in British pantomime style.

The Victorian plot, with its bizarre touches of the exotic, encompasses an ocean voyage, a cargo of stardust, a sea battle, a shipwreck and death threats from islanders.

A dozen area thespians portray more than 100 characters from beaten orphans and British seamen to slinky mermaids and bumbling pirates. Frequent word plays and goofy puns flow one on top of the other while delivering more twists and turns than a lab rat’s maze.

In this prequel the stiff upper lip Lord Aster is under orders from the Queen to incinerate all stardust that falls from the sky. Stardust is dangerous and changes people, places and things at the mere touch. In the wrong hands, it can cause world chaos.

Lord Aster prepares a stardust-filled trunk to sail on the Wasp and an identical sand-filled decoy to sail on Neverland. While he sails on the Wasp to Rundoon to dispose of it on Mt. Jalapeno, his know-it-all daughter Molly is on Neverland with the decoy.

No sooner do they set sail, than the mustachioed villain Black Stache hijacks the Wasp only to discover that Neverland’s loathsome captain Bill Slank switched the ships’ cargo.

Slank is pretty disgusting. He’s brought aboard three orphans (played by adults) who have never seen the light of day and he plans to sell them as slaves. One unnamed Boy, the trio’s most rebellious, is our first glimpse of Peter Pan.

A great sea battle takes place, and one of the delights of this production is how director James MacDonald weaves a great deal of intensity and maritime chaos simply using two toy ships, rope, a few props and smooth-running choreography that keeps the full cast hopping.

Oscar Derkx gives us a Peter that is at first angry and rebellious yet in the space of the show ironically learns to be man when he is destined to remain a boy.

Although the title suggests the play is about Peter, it’s almost as much about Molly. As Molly, Andrea Rankin is a feminist with an electric spark that ignites hope among the disillusioned.

While the hero and heroine sort their priorities, the villain is always the driving force of any good pantomime. And Farren Timoteo’s Black Stache, a pirate who considers himself a poet and a romantic, is delightfully evil and irreverent.

Timoteo nails every joke, even hamming up a few. Whether lifting his eyebrows, flicking his wrist or tripping over his feet, he cradles the audience in the palm of his hand from beginning to end.

Coming in at a close second is former St. Albert Children’s Theatre actor Garett Ross, as the cross-dressing Mrs. Bumbrake, Molly’s nanny. Ross’s character is at once stern, gossipy and flirtatious. His hip-thrusts in particular provoked huge outbursts of laugher.

Peter and the Starcatcher is not to everyone’s taste. Some people left during opening night’s intermission. However, if you arrive without preconceptions and let your imagination do the work, Peter and the Starcatcher can be a reminder of childhood.