OCEAN CITY — The Ocean City High School Drama Guild is set to present “Peter and the Starcatcher” on stage Nov. 20-22 at the Bill and Nancy Hughes Performing Arts Center.
Performances are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. each evening.
Director Ellen Byrne said the play “invites you to come aboard as we meet a Boy, his orphan companions and a precocious girl named Molly who sail the high seas, fight pirates, survive a shipwreck, discover a tribal nation and sing with mermaids, while protecting a dangerous treasure.”
The play is based on the 2004 novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, adapted for the stage by Rick Elice. It serves as a prequel to “Peter and Wendy” by J.M. Barrie, providing a backstory for the characters of Peter Pan, Mrs. Darling, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook.
Bryne, serving as director for the first time following the resignation of Robert LeMaire in the spring, has been costume designer and assistant director for years.
“The whole premise of the play is supposed to be using your imagination to build the world that you play in,” Byrne said. “The way I’ve had the kids trying to think about it is to harken back to those days when we were little kids and you went out in the neighborhood with all your friends and you didn’t have much in the way of fancy toys. You had a couple of empty boxes and an old Christmas tree. So ‘Peter and the Starcatcher’ is a story made with minimal things.”
Freshman Henry Costal stars as Boy, aka Peter. The Marmora resident has been acting since fifth grade. Along with his twin sister Tallulah, he follows older brother Charlie Costal, who was a star of the stage for four years at OCHS.
Tallulah Costal, who portrays Hawking Clam, said she is so happy to be part of the theater.
“I’m so excited. I’ve been looking forward to being a part of the Drama Guild for so long and it’s everything I thought it would be and more,” she said. “I’m having just the best time.
Describing the play as “kind of crazy,” Henry said his character is an orphan being sent off to work for the king, “but really, he’s going to try and eat me. He’s going to feed me to his snakes and I end up escaping and making it to this island, which becomes the island of the Lost Boys where they stay in ‘Peter Pan.’”
“There’s magic, fighting, jumping, falling in the water, star stuff,” Costal said, boasting that he does his own stunts. “I jump off one of the stairs of the platform at one time and we have a little slide thing that I slide down. It’s cool.”
Costal said the rehearsal process has been terrific.
“I’ve made a lot of new friends and it’s been really great being able to work as leads with other seniors who are leaving next year and just making friends who are so much older than me,” he said, noting his favorite thing about being in theater is “being able to express yourself through different characters and truly bringing characters to life and putting them on the stage.”
Outside the theater, he enjoys biking and golfing with friends but “I’m always just either singing, dancing, acting, you know, a lot of everything I do sort of is based around theater.”
Sophomore Ingrid Pohlig is the play’s female lead, Molly, who is the mother of Wendy in ‘Peter Pan.’
Molly meets Peter Pan before Wendy and teaches him to fly.
“She kind of like saves his life at a couple points and guides him through becoming Peter Pan,” Costal said.
Pohlig is looking forward to the performances.
“I think it’s really fun because theres a lot of nice, really funny jokes in it but it’s still kind of centered toward all ages,” she said.
Performing in her first major role, the Ventnor resident said she is nervous but also excited.
“I feel really grateful and I’m just working really hard,” Pohlig said.
Costal said the partnership has evolved from the beginning of rehearsals.
“Being leads together, we’ve had to grow like as a friendship,” he said. “I’ve been just getting to know her.”
Pohlig said she enjoys the Drama Guild “because I get to see all my friends and then we get to work through scenes together and if there’s a problem, we solve it.”
She said her favorite part of the play is “the set and I like how we use props to kind of make it come alive.”
The set features the deck of a wooden sailing ship and is a constant throughout the production.
“It’s a play that really uses the imagination,” Pohlig said.
Narrators, dressed in black and situated off to the side, play a prominent role in the play, with one serving for each major character.
Rhyan Wilkin, narrator for Molly, said they “try to tell the story to the audience but directly, they kind of replicate the characters that they’re trying to do the narration.”
Ocean City resident Sean Wilde said he really enjoys playing his character, the orphan Prentiss, whom he called “very snarky, very sarcastic.”
Senior Noah Baker, who plays a convincing Black Stache, said he likes getting to play off cousin Christian Hornig-Finneran.
“They’ve pretty much given us the steering wheel to the ship and given us great freedom to experiment with the characters,” Baker said.
Cast
Henry Costal: Boy/Peter
Ingrid Pohlig: Molly
Elizabeth Louis: Mrs. Bumbrake
Sam Lowe: Lord Aster
Sean Wilde: Prentiss
Hanna Dolinsky: Smee
Andrew Pelaez: Fighting Prawn
Taylor Mulford: Teacher
Adam Wertzberger: Mack
Noah Baker: Black Stache
Ruby Scott: Grempkin
Christian Hornig-Finneran: Slank
Jackson Mulford: Capt. Scott
Lily Pettit: Ted
Brodie Madison: Alf
Tallulah Costal: Hawking Clam
Ike Thompson: Sanchez
Nathan Lera, Ryhan Wilkin, Julia Colangelo, Cooper Lloyd, Tegan Goodwin, Hannah Oliver, Addison Bradshaw, Michaela Voegtlin, Violet Knapp, Sydney Chin, Reina Xu, Logan Moore, Sydney Burwell: narrators
British Navy sailors, Neverland crew, pirates, orphans, mermaids and mollusks — Tim Arsenault, Olivia Baez, James Brown, Cassidy Campanella, Hannah Cavileer, Emily Ferretti, Alyssa Hopson, Ellie Levick, Olivia Morgan, Braden Rementer, Madelyn Saul, Brynn Sulick and Bryan Vandever
Student stage managers — Morgan Dougan, Scarlett Garrett and Addison Guest
Student director — Tegan Goodwin
Student choreographer — Reina Xu
Student vocal director — Taylor Mulford
Dramaturg — Emma Saul
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
