FLYING HIGH
DirEctor MichaEl licata PilotS ‘PEtEr Pan’ for PittSBurGh MuSical thEatEr
Peter Pan is flying high these days, from the live musical watched by millions on television to Broadway’s “Finding Neverland” to the star-packed October film “Pan,” a prequel that J.M. Barrie never envisioned. The boy who refuses to grow up was even reimagined as a villain in TV’s “Once Upon a Time.”
When veteran director Michael Licata was asked to pilot “Peter Pan” for Pittsburgh Musical Theater, he went back to the source to decide for himself what approach to take.
“I’ve reread the novel and listened to audiobooks on my drive and watched the movies, and of course I love the Mary Martin [TV] version, I grew up on it. So I’m very, very connected to it, and this cast has made me a little more connected to it,” said Mr. Licata, who took hold of the production when original director Bob Durkin had to step down from the company’s season-ending musical.
Mr. Licata spent 25 years as an actor before making the switch to directing musical theater full time. He has staged shows at West Virginia Public Theatre in Morgantown, where he has worked with PMT students and alumni, but this is his first time directing in Pittsburgh.
When Mr. Licata was reviewing the many versions of the tale, he was reminded that the original 1911 novel — which followed the stage play by seven years — was titled “Peter Pan and Wendy.”
“Sometimes I feel the character of Wendy is put on the back burner, but to me it’s a story about not wanting to grow up, and the arc of Peter is he never grows up and Wendy does,” the director said. “You want to be careful in the way that Wendy is cast. She is supposed to be 14 or 15 years old, and you don’t want her to have those nuances that make her a woman as opposed to a child approaching being a woman and realizing that she has to grow up. There’s an innocence in Wendy that I think we were really able to capture in the casting of ‘Peter Pan’ here at PMT.”
Michelle Coben, a PMT alumna now attending the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, will play Peter, and Jillian Ferguson, a Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center and Pittsburgh CLO alumna, will play Wendy.
“We found a girl [to play Wendy] who I knew well because she’s worked for me before in other cities … and she brings to it the way I want the story told. I really want it to be about two children, where one never grows up and the other gets to the point where she realizes, ‘I have to grow up.’ That’s what life is,” Mr. Licata said.
The cast includes PMT regular Tim Hartman as Captain Hook, following other largerthan-life roles this season as King Triton in “The Little Mermaid” and the Monster in “Young Frankenstein.”
“I think what I really love about this cast in part is because of what PMT is — the professional people, and then the rest of the cast is filled out by a very talented, hard-working group of students. I’ve directed at university, and I very much feel that atmosphere because I walk into the building at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and it’s buzzing with classes. Some of these kids will go to school in the morning and by 10 o’clock at night, they are still there.”
Ms. Coben was one of them before making her way to Mr. Licata’s alma mater, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, with a stop in West Virginia to work with the director.
When PMT leader Colleen Petrucci suggested Ms. Coben for the role of Peter, Mr. Licata was delighted but didn’t expect it would work. He had tried at other times to cast students from CCM, but they could not be released toward the end of the semester. The timing was right this time. Ms. Coben finished her finals, and in keeping with tradition, PMT has a female playing the role of the high-flying, fun-loving boy from Neverland.
“She’s young, and she matches well with our Wendy,” said Mr. Licata, “and I’m hoping it will be a wonderful vision realized.”