Tickets are now on sale for the Castlemaine Theatre Company’s first full-stage production since COVID-19 swept across our shores – ‘Peter Panto: Or One Flew Over the Second Star on the Right’.
The production is a swashbuckling adventure! It’s Peter Pan as you’ve never seen before! It’s a proper panto, so plenty of booing and
hissing and ‘Behind you!’ moments.
Nurse Ratched is a cross-dressing Dame looking for love, the Lost Boys want to be a Boy Band, Tiger Lily is a martial arts expert (and Skipper of the Castlemaine Magpies footy team) and Nana is a Freudian analyst.
An irreverent mash-up with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, the story begins in Castlemaine Health’s Youth Psych Ward…and it’s medication time…
Peter Panto has been a true labour of love, first thwarted after a successful casting in 2020, as the pandemic swept across Australia. The production this year is set to wow audiences.
Director Kate Stones was inspired to bring this adaptation to life after rewatching the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, featuring Jack Nicholson.
“I was struck by the similarities. McMurphy is such a Peter Pan character – he’s arrogant, a born leader, and definitely averse to being a sensible grown-up, and he ends up with his own band of lost boys in the ward, whom he takes on various crazy adventures,” Stones says.
“To me pantomime means permission to be naughty – it’s anti-authoritarian, low-brow, guerilla entertainment. It takes traditionally enshrined stories and mixes them up, there’s gender fluidity built in and lots of yelling from the audience. Families will love it, but I hope everyone comes along to enjoy the fun,” she said.
This is a pantomime sure to entertain with popular songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s to bop and sing along to!
Stellar casting rounds off the production with new and familiar faces, with a cast of both young and young at heart.
The vocal arrangements have been created by cast member Orvokki Britton (who plays Lost Boy Nibs) and fun dance routines are put together by cast member Paula Russell (Pirate Starkley).
Orvokki says “I absolutely adore turning up to rehearsal, the cast, and crew of this production are a group full of fun and many laughs. I always come in feeling excited and leave feeling fresh and full of life. I am simply bursting to get this show on the stage!”
Fellow cast member Leah Fistric (‘Pirate Coco’) says, after all the challenges faced by the performing arts industries and their audiences over the last few years, Peter Panto feels like the perfect show to bring the community back into their theatre seats, to laugh out loud and sing- along.
“We have a fabulous all-ages cast to work alongside, inclusive, warm, energized, and ready to perform,” Fistric says.
Peter Panto: Or One Flew Over the Second Star on the Right will be performed at the Phee Broadway Theatre from November 4-20. Tickets are available from Maine Shoes and Accessories, 174 Barker St, Castlemaine or on Trybooking.
