Ever wonder how Captain Hook got his famous appendage? Or how Tinker Bell came to be? There’s a lot J.M. Barrie didn’t tell us about Neverland and its inhabitants, kinda like L. Frank Baum leaving stuff out of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
A few years ago Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson wrote a prequel to “Peter Pan” called “Peter and the Starcatchers” — basically “Wicked” for boys.
The title of this new off-Broadway adaptation, written by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys”), refers to a single Starcatcher, though that’s pretty much the only time the manic production shows any restraint.
If often feels as if everybody involved with “Peter and the Starcatcher” has ADD, starting with co-directors Roger Rees (who’s about to play Gomez in “The Addams Family”) and Alex Timbers (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”). At best, it’s high fun. At worst, it’s mind-numbing.
The play follows the adventures of a young, nameless orphan (Adam Chanler-Berat, last of “Next to Normal”) and his friend, the plucky Molly (Celia Keenan-Bolger, from “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”), as they go from shipwreck to not-so-desert island to, well, defying gravity. By the end, the boy has acquired special powers and a name: Peter.
The creative team — which also includes movement director Steven Hoggett (“American Idiot”) — compensates for its relatively small budget with a low-tech, vaudevillian approach that’s often very effective. A rope suggests an entire ship, a flapping rubber glove stands in for a tropical bird and so on.
The actors, decked out in urchin-wear, look as if they’ve just stepped out of a 19th-century picture book — until they open their mouths.
Aiming to please both kids and adults, the jokes alternate between broad and pointed with plenty of contemporary references, as when the petulant pirate Black Stache — the future Captain Hook — describes a missing trunk as “elusive as the melody in a Philip Glass opera.”
As Black Stache, Christian Borle (“Spamalot”) is a manic whirlwind of pratfalls and grandiose mugging: He’s a Keystone Kops version of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow.
Borle alone is worth the price of admission, though he could be a little more menacing — the comic antics get in the way of the piracy. But then, there’s little time for anything but biff-bang-pow high jinks in “Peter and the Starcatcher.”
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com