‘As Small As Stars’ @ Sundown Collaborative Theatre
—Jan Farrington
Georgia playwright and theater-maker Will Murdock got on the local radar in 2023 at Amphibian Stage’s annual “Sparkfest”—and now Denton’s Sundown Collaborative Theatre is giving Murdock’s play As Small As Stars an official full-out production.
Stars is a Peter Pan riff—the latest of many for J.M. Barrie’s fragile (but enduring) fantasy, which seems to have shoulders big enough for an infinite number of playwrights to stand on. Murdock’s take on the elements of the story might be called What Happened at the Darling’s House While the Children Were Gone.
So, no Wendy, no John, no Michael. Only their empty beds and a wide-open window, where mother Mary (Katherine Weber) lights candles each night (“My children will not come home to the dark”)—and father George (Jacob Drum) taps on an adding machine, toting up the cost of every possible future each child might have…if they come back. Practically speaking, George feels those candles are costing them real money.
Gives you a different perspective on the thing, doesn’t it? Somewhere, out in Never Land, there are adventures and fun. Back at home, there’s a tangle of grief, loneliness, and blame, and a husband and wife who seem to like each other less every day. (A voice out of nowhere—the clock on the wall, perhaps?—stoically counts off the days and hours of the children’s absence.) George’s shrill, managing mother (Lauren Juckniewitz) doesn’t help them by visiting regularly; she just adds to the all-round worry and sadness.
You can even hear how little George and Mary are “in sync”—she plays tenderly on the piano, he clatters away on the adding machine.
The 90-minute play is thoughtfully directed by Brandy Townsend, with an intriguing period set design by Frank Green: the usual nursery (though the bedroom also contains Nana’s dog house, George’s desk, and Mary’s piano) but with torn, ragged-edge walls that open (where the ceiling should be) to a wide sky above and beyond. If Peter turned up, he wouldn’t need a window.
This, then, is Mary and George’s journey. Can they survive as a couple without their children, however long that separation may last? Can they live through the bad press—the parents who went to a party and left a DOG caring for their kids? Can they remember how to be happy, to enjoy the day, to dream of a different life?
George has bad dreams, of a “croc” chasing him, wanting to “swallow me whole.” Mary wonders if the children “fled from us” because they were so boring. Clocks chime, church bells ring, pirates sing in the distance (sound by Carissa Davis)—and a little fairy sets up shop in the nursery. The parents see Tink as their “only hope” of finding (and maybe trading her for) their children. Even Peter (Riley Dereska) drops in, with hints that both George and Mary once knew him. “You grew up too much!” “Have not…Have so!”
“I feel them,” says Mary, who believes, at least in the moment, that Wendy, one day, “will see us, as small as stars in the distance, and follow us home.” She calls George “my darling Mr. Darling”—and there is dancing, play, laughter. Murdock’s story, poetical and very human, doesn’t quite end…but we leave them in a more joyful, hopeful place.
WHEN: March 21-30, 2025
WHERE: 2201 S Interstate 35E (Theater Annex, inside Golden Triangle Mall)
WEB: sundowntheatre.org
