In the program for Captain Hook: My Story, Or How I Clawed My Way To The Top – currently playing at Spotlighters Theatre, in partnership with the Baltimore Playwrights Festival – Writer Peter Boyer tells us that he penned this script based on his curiosity and fascination with the backstory of the legendary storybook villain and his antagonistic relationship with his ever-youthful nemesis. He sifted through the tidbits of Hook’s history mentioned here and there in the source material, and in doing so, wished to explore the character while also challenging our notions of Peter Pan as a heroic figure. No one can deny that this is a rich and intriguing premise; one that could certainly be parlayed into a clever, multi-layered stage show, ideal for showcasing the talent and versatility of a nuanced and dynamic actor finding new and subtle gems within the character to surprise us with.
Likewise, when confronted with the poster for this show – featuring a Black woman in the lead – one might imagine that this bold casting choice was made for some good reason, in order to present fresh revelations about Hook’s nature, gender, or ethnicity that we hadn’t had reason to consider before.
It is a tragedy, then – or perhaps “farce” would be the more appropriate term – that instead, this play offers none of these things. Rather, the audience is inundated for the better part of an hour with a badly-strung-together series of cheap, obvious, unfunny gags and pop culture references (plus plenty of mugging), finished off with ten minutes of inept faux-poignancy and a wholly uninspired “twist ending” revealing the true nature of the rivalry between Hook and Peter Pan. In short, if you find the weak pun in the show’s title to be the height of wit and humor, good news! You can spend $20 and be subjected to an hour of that. The thing has all the camp of a drag brunch, minus the edge, charm, or amusing costuming.
This presentation feels like the last day of grade school, when all the students are summoned to the library or assembly hall so they can spend the final hour of the day enduring a goofy bit of scripted dress-up from the English or History teachers pretending to speak to the kids as George Washington or The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s not only the opposite of entertaining, it’s the height of cringe, and something the students will likely be mocking and snickering about all summer. They, at least, have the consolation of knowing that sitting through such a thing is better than sitting in a classroom for that final sixty minutes. The rest of us, however, have better places to be, and a galaxy of streaming television at home that won’t make us feel like we’re watching our grandparents embarrassingly try to rap.
Boyer brings nothing interesting to this classic figure whatsoever. He may be proud of the small details he managed to glean from the original material, but they add nothing to our understanding or appreciation for the character. (Yes, Mr. Boyer, Hook went to Eton. Good for you for spotting that. Very clever of you. Feel free to mention it a dozen or so times in the show, without actually lending any substance or insight into that facet of his backstory.)
The show’s star Melissa Broy Fortson has apparently been part of the theatre scene for over 40 years, so her clumsy and uninteresting performance is surprising. She fumbles over her lines often, and her accent work is beyond woeful – her “British pirate” wanders all over the UK from line to line, and her mush-mouthed “German shrink” starts off somewhere between Ireland and Jamaica before staggering off into sub-Saharan Africa. One wonders who she was up against when auditioning, particularly since the playwright admits that the piece wasn’t written with a female POC in mind.
Was this really the best they could come up with for the role? Did they think “different” would automatically equate to “interesting?” It can sometimes, but it doesn’t here. (Likewise, Director Miriam Bazensky has been a Baltimore director for 38 years, making this nonsensical exercise all the more perplexing.)
Those of us raised in the ’90s have not forgotten Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant, scary, funny, sad, neurotic, pretentious take on the character of the infamous pirate in Steven Spielberg’s Hook. It was a masterful deconstruction of the character, a way to hold him up to the evils of the modern world, to paint him as a symbol of our fear of aging, and to make him feel timeless in his villainy.
This stage portrayal, by comparison, feels like a terrible waste of potential, not to mention the audience’s time. If you’re the polite sort of person who doesn’t like troubling other patrons by checking their phone screen during a production, then remember to wear your wristwatch to this. You’ll be looking at it often.
Running Time: 55 minutes with no intermission
Captain Hook: My Story or How I Learned to Claw My Way to the Top, a Baltimore Playwrights Festival show, plays through August 21, 2022 at The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre— 817 St. Paul Street in the historic Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore City in Maryland. For tickets call the box office at (410) 752-1225 or purchase them online.
