Learning to fly

Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre has mounted some big productions in the past, but “Peter Pan” soars above them all.

The theater hired Flying by Foy, based in Las Vegas, to provide the equipment that will allow Haley New Ostrander as Peter Pan to teach the three Darling children to fly.

Never before, says production manager Michael McGiveney, have actors at Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre taken flight – not even in last year’s biggest production, “Beauty and the Beast.”

“In ‘Beauty and the Beast’ it looked like (the Beast) flew, but actually his costume flew, he didn’t,” McGiveney says. “So this is the first time we’ve actually lifted people up off the stage.”

The play, directed by Bob Sembiante, follows the adventures of Peter Pan and the Darling children as he takes them to Neverland to help rescue the Indian princess, Tiger Lily, from Captain Hook’s pirates.

This musical requires five production sets including a 16-foot-tall, 17th century Spanish pirate ship. McGiveney’s crew began building the sets back in February.

“It’s our biggest production to date,” he says.

The sets are on rollers so that they can be moved behind the the stage and outside the door. “Some of it will be stored almost on the street,” McGiveney says.

The wall-of-mirrors set for the theater’s previous show, “A Chorus Line,” was specially designed to allow the “Peter Pan” scenery to be rolled in for rehearsals during the daytime even while “Chorus Line” continued its run at night.

Actors have been practicing the techniques required for flying.

“They have to learn balance and most of all timing and specifically where they are standing on the stage,” McGiveney says. “If they’re standing in the wrong place, then when they lift in the air, they swing in the wrong direction. It’s quite a ballet of logistics.”

The summer theater will pay Flying by Foy $12,000 for its help.

Flying by Foy handles flying equipment for a wide variety of productions, ranging from community theater to Broadway, dating back to the 1954 Mary Martin version of “Peter Pan.”

Walter Kerr, drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune, described the special effects in his review of that production.

“The flying, before we get past it, is nothing short of miraculous,” he wrote. “For the first time in my theater-going experience, it’s been designed rather than limited to a couple of quick exits – in effect it’s been choreographed by director Jerome Robbins.

“Result: It’s not so much a nervous stunt as a rapturous lyrical experience, and you’re going to be popeyed with happy disbelief at the first-act curtain: Peter brushing away the heavens at hurricane force while Wendy and family bobble gently behind him, with moon and stars slipping swiftly away beneath their dangling feet. It’s the way ‘Peter Pan’ always should have been, and wasn’t.”

McGiveney echoes Kerr. When four actors suddenly soar into the air, acting, singing and dancing at the same time, the effect is startling, he says.

“To see a human being go up in the air, you don’t think much of it when you watch it on television,” McGiveney says. “When you see that live on stage, it’s pretty amazing. It’s not the way we perceive people.”

Ostrander, a teacher at Ballard High School in Seattle who played Rusty in “Footloose” last year, has caught on quickly.

“She’s just doing a bang-up job of (flying,)” McGiveney says.

Troy Wageman, who played Willard in “Footloose” and Gaston in “Beauty and Beast,” will play Captain Hook. Frank Jewett plays his sidekick Smee.

The Darling children are played by Jessi Little, Zachary Jackson and Josh Ratelle.

Fortunately, McGiveney says, none of them appears to possess a fear of heights.

“The children are having a grand time,” he says. “They just think it’s a great game.”