Westerly’s Brandon Tallardy performs in URI’s ‘Peter and the Starcatcher’ | Entertainment

Tallardy, a student at the university, began acting with Westerly’s Theatre Scrapbook company, and continued on throughout his high school days, even playing the lead role of George Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, “Our Town.”

“Peter and the Starcatcher” — a production of the university’s theatre department, written by Rick Elice, based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, with music by Wayne Barker, shares the “fun and whimsical backstory for Peter Pan and his arch-nemesis Captain Hook,” said Paige Monopoli, a communications coordinator for the university’s college of arts and sciences in an email Monday.

In addition to the eight-show run, Monopoli said, the theatre department will host a special school performance on Friday, Dec. 6, at 10 a.m. for 150 select students — from Westerly High School, Central Falls High School, Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts and Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts — featuring a talkback with members of the cast and creative team.

“Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning” may be the directions for finding Neverland, said Monopoli, “But, before Neverland ever came to be, the story begins with an orphan boy, later known as Peter.”

When the play begins, she continued, the audience meets a poor orphaned child — known as Boy — on the high seas with his fellow orphans and a young girl named Molly, the daughter of famous starcatcher, Lord Astor. Molly is on a mission to save the world and protect a treasure trunk filled with “magical star stuff” from getting into the hands of evil pirate Black Stache.

As they travel aboard the Neverland ship headed for a faraway land, Molly and Boy learn about love, friendship and forge an unbreakable bond, she added.

“To invite the audience into this fantastical world, the ship must be steered by a director with an innate sense of play,” Monopoli said. So, enter Guest Director Ted Clement, who comes from the Community College of Rhode Island’s theatre department “with dynamic range in his experience.”

“The nature of the play is to build the story out of an assortment of costume, props, and scenic elements, in order to engage the audience in a game of imagination,” said Clement who is directing his first play at the university. “My concept for the play is to base it in what I call ‘grandma’s attic’ or a space filled with a collection of memories.”

Clement said the story takes place in the home of an aging stage star who welcomes a group of children into her home, all of whom have been sent to the English countryside to escape the dangers of the blitzkrieg during World War II.

“Seeking adventure, the children discover an attic filled with costumes and props of all kinds, and play a game called ‘Peter and The Starcatcher,'” he said. “So while the story occurs in the 1880s, the world of our production takes place in 1939.”

The scenic designer for the play is Rénee Surprenant Fitzgerald, a university alum and freelance designer and scenic artist who has worked around the country and is currently the lecturer of set design and the resident scenic artist at Brown University.

Freshman Max Hunter plays the role of Boy. 

“I think everyone can relate to him in one way or another,” said Hunter in a press release from the university. “Whether it’s trauma or falling in love and how weird and bizarre those feelings are.”

Hunter said his character is also “very relatable.”

“I think it’s very interesting seeing his rise and not letting his trauma define him,” he added, “but rather how he overcomes them to become the person he always wanted to be.”