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"Rick Elice, by his own admission, just couldn\u2019t hold down a regular job. Instead he finds himself, at 55,&amp;nbsp; a co-librettist for the smash hit \u201CJersey Boys,\u201D and the author of the new Broadway play, \u201CPeter and the Starcatcher,\u201D which has just been nominated for&amp;nbsp; nine Tony Awards, including Best Play. Elice\u2019s stage adaptation of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson\u2019s prequel to the Peter Pan legend has also earned him another Tony nod, as lyricist. He has become Broadway\u2019s go-to guy for librettos: Future projects include a musical version of the \u201870s blaxploitation flick \u201CSuper-Fly, The Musical,\u201D with Bill T. Jones, and a show about&amp;nbsp; Studio 54 with Christopher Ashley (\u201CMemphis\u201D ) and songwriters Peter Yanowitz and Stephen Trask (\u201CHedwig and the Angry Inch\u201D).It\u2019s a fitting career peak for the New York-born writer, the leitmotif of whose work has been the&amp;nbsp; reinvention of family, whether it\u2019s the \u201Csibling\u201D rivalry among Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (\u201CJersey Boys\u201D), the delicious perversities of \u201CThe Addams Family,\u201D or the adventures of three boys, freed from a Dickensian workhouse and into the hold of a pirate ship (\u201CPeter and the Starcatcher\u201D). Elice\u2019s own professional voyage has been just as circuitous. He\u2019s built sets, choreographed, stage-managed, film-edited, and acted \u2014 most notably, playing a 25-year-old porn star (at age 45, mind you) in Elaine May\u2019s 2002 off-Broadway comedy, \u201CAdult Entertainment.\u201D But it was his 18-year tenure as a creative director at a Broadway advertising firm, followed by a consultancy at the theatrical division of Disney, that put him in contact with people who would change his life. Chief among these were director Stanley Donen (\u201CSingin\u2019 in the Rain\u201D) who would introduce Elice to Marshall Brickman (\u201CAnnie Hall\u201D), with whom he\u2019d collaborate on both \u201CJersey Boys\u201D and \u201CThe Addams Family\u201D; and actor Roger Rees (\u201CNicholas Nickleby\u201D) who would become his life partner, and who would&amp;nbsp; bring Elice into \u201CPeter and the Starcatchers,\u201D a stage adaptation of which he was developing with Alex Timbers (\u201CBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson\u201D). Elice recently spoke with us about his love of collaboration and what to do when you find yourself in a poker game with Brickman and his famous Hollywood friends (\u201CJust shut up and listen\u201D).Your play is based on a young adult novel, \u201CPeter and the Starcatchers.\u201D When did you decide it\u2019d grow up?The novel was written as a sort of elaborate bedtime story, which began when Ridley\u2019s young daughter asked him how Peter Pan met Captain Hook in the first place. Barry and Pearson were interested in the character of Peter and trying to reboot the concept specifically [with him] as a young man. I\u2019d always been interested in the plays of J.M. Barrie. But not \u201CPeter Pan\u201D as much as his proto-feminist plays like \u201CWhat Every Woman Knows,\u201D \u201CMary Rose,\u201D and \u201CThe Admirable Crichton.\u201D So when Roger and Alex brought the project to me I was doing mental cartwheels because I was interested in the connectivity between this young boy \u2014 this feral, inarticulate, unnamed character \u2014 who is moved to heroic action by his chance meeting with this 13-year-old, Molly. So at its heart, it is about this young man, who becomes Peter, and this empowered young woman, who becomes a starcatcher.Thus the dropped \u201CS\u201D&amp;nbsp; at the end of&amp;nbsp; the play\u2019s title?Yes. It seems to be cosmetic, a change that merely says, this is just a poor theater version of something that should\u2019ve been much larger.&amp;nbsp; But it\u2019s a fundamental storytelling change. I wasn\u2019t interested in all these&amp;nbsp; people called starcatchers.&amp;nbsp; And the novel is so rangy and picaresque and filled with stuff that you couldn\u2019t possibly put on the stage within two hours. So I asked Tom [Schumacher, the producer]&amp;nbsp; if I could drop the \u201Cs\u201D from this Disney-owned title. And he asked, \u201CWhy?\u201D and I said, because it\u2019s the key to unlocking what is the hero\u2019s journey \u2014 the true hero being a girl, not a boy, in the tradition of Scout Finch in \u201CTo Kill A Mockingbird\u201D and Jo March in \u201CLittle Women.\u201DHow much were you aware of the original Barrie play as you were adapting the novel, which is a prequel?I was very much interested in trying to connect what Barrie was writing in \u201CPeter Pan\u201D to what Barry and Pearson were writing in their original story. Then because of Roger and his connection to Dickens it was always intended that the show would have this \u201CNicholas Nickleby\u201D DNA in it. Add Alex\u2019s brilliant textual analytical powers, and what we wanted to do was connect the dots between the play and the novel, not just in terms of plot but also in terms of style.Some of the critics took exception to the anachronisms and the pop cultural references in the play.&amp;nbsp;The original 1904 Barrie play was full of anachronisms, puns, contemporary references, ditties, bawdy low jokes and high humor, sentiment and preposterous coincidences that we accept because of the glorious nature of the writing and the wonderful characters we\u2019ve come to know.&amp;nbsp; We tried to channel those instincts and techniques while being [faithful] to the contemporary irreverence of the novel.Was the proto-Captain Hook character Black Stache always intended to be that flashy, or did that happen once Christian Borle was cast?I was intrigued with the idea that the role was rather unformed when Barrie went into rehearsals for \u201CPeter Pan.\u201D And then he hired an actor named Gerald du Maurier, father of the writer Daphne du Maurier. His&amp;nbsp; essential quality as an actor was a certain flamboyance, and that flamboyance came to inform&amp;nbsp; what the role was. We all think of Cyril Ritchard [who played Hook in the Mary Martin \u201CPeter Pan\u201D television classic]. But Ritchard had seen du Maurier\u2019s performance. And then when Christian was cast, I got to write to this part for his particular genius.Roger Rees, now as director, uses many of the storytelling techniques&amp;nbsp; employed in \u201CNicholas Nickleby\u201D in \u201CPeter.\u201D How did that affect the writing?We didn\u2019t have a lot of money, so they [decided] we\u2019re just going to use what\u2019s lying around. If they found rope, I wrote scenes that could be performed with rope. It&amp;nbsp; was an invitation to use unlimited imagination and lots of words. Another thing that had me doing cartwheels when Roger and Alex asked me to do this was the fact that I\u2019d always been attracted to the writings of Charles Dickens. I had a boyhood obsession with him \u2014 not that I ever wanted to work in a workhouse or get to smell how London must\u2019ve smelled like then. But that world is so appealing and colorful, and to be able to evoke it with a minimum of stagecraft was a real challenge.So, you\u2019re moving from 19th-century England and lost boys to 1970s New York City and drug-dealing pimps in \u201CSuper-Fly, the Musical.\u201DI know. When you say Curtis Mayfield and \u201CSuper-Fly,\u201D the first name that pops into your head isn\u2019t that of a nice white Jew. I certainly don\u2019t pretend to understand the mind of a black man, especially one in 1972. But I know what it feels like to be marginalized and the music brings me to a place in my head that is personal and powerful. Working with Bill T. Jones and Seth [Zvi Rosenfeld] and talking this into existence has been the real pleasure.What\u2019s the theme?For me, it\u2019s about an outlaw whose actions creates a lot of hurt and resentment in the community and who comes to realize that it\u2019s more important to be about something larger than himself. Intellectually you can make that statement, it\u2019s like the 99 percent versus the one percent. But the theater is not an intellectual form, it\u2019s an emotional one. And how you make a connection with this guy is the really interesting creative challenge.&amp;nbsp;Read more theater coverage in Play by Play[content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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