If you are ready for a fun-filled, and a little surreal, musical for some relief from the election, then do not miss UCR’s Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production staging of the Tony-winning “Peter and the Starcatcher” at the University Theatre.

The play, which runs Nov. 7-16, is Rick Elice’s 2009 adaptation of the 2004 children’s novel “Peter and the Starcatchers” by Dave Barry and author Ridley Pearson. This story recounts how Peter Pan transforms from a Dickensian orphan into the pan flute-playing boy who could fly and wouldn’t grow up. You could say it isn’t so much a coming-of-age story as a discovering-a-childhood story the orphans had been robbed of living.

Twelve UCR student actors take the stage, some playing multiple roles, bringing to life sailors, pirates, British naval officers, Italians as Mollusk natives, and orphans while singing, dancing, and operating puppets. Yes, puppets like a cat, a bird to match who will become Tinker Bell, sailing ships, and the infamous alligator. The props all tie into this fantasy world where weapons can be a toilet plunger or a jumbo potato masher and oversized kitchen tools.

“We talked a lot in the designer process meetings about found objects and that's why you have these oversized spoons, an oversized spatula, and then all of their weapons,” said director Daphnie Sicre. “It just adds a layer of enjoyment to the show and also puts you in a world you don't normally think about.”

Even with so many actors on stage, the production is fluid and loose, as if the audience is witnessing an event unfolding before us. With so many people and so many parts of the tale told through singing and dancing and stage fights, things could go horribly wrong. But they don’t.

“Students took choreography workshops, musical theater workshops, intimacy choreography, and a dance workshop to get all the actors in the same language and understanding of music,” she said.

Sicre also credited her student assistant directors with coordinating the actors onstage for the most seamless action possible. “They were so essential at helping. I'm sitting in the front and I'm working with the student actors and they're sitting in the back. They're being my eyes from the back and saying what about this scene and what about that scene, really looking at it from another perspective.”

Even in this fun fantasy, there is tragedy and the heartache of thwarted love. In J.M. Barrie’s original story, Pan is a villain who kidnaps children from their beds. Over the years, the character has become more like a mischievous sprite and has gone from a young boy who still has all his baby teeth to a teenager on the cusp of puberty.

The two actors, Josiah Alpher as Pan and Sasha Brown as Molly the Starcatcher-in-training, make us feel what Pan loses by staying forever young — and it isn’t freedom from adult responsibilities. In Barrie’s novel, Pan says, "To die would be an awfully big adventure." Living eternally on the cusp of sexual awakening as Pan does, death might seem the only loss of innocence he could hope for. In this play, though, Pan has a different hope other than not growing up as he plays games and flies around.

Children and attitudes toward them in England moved from the child labor of the Victorian era of Dickens to child labor laws of the Edwardian era of Barrie. This created a social attitude of childhood freedom to play and evade responsibility of the adult world. Viewers can ponder what this adaptation reveals about contemporary attitudes toward children. But do so as you tap your feet, laugh at the jokes and situations, and immerse yourself in the world of pre-Peter Pan on his way to Neverland.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the UCR Performing Arts site. There will be a talkback following the Nov. 15 performance.