Peter Pan star Lindsey Roberts quotes Gabriel Byrne’s character from The Usual Suspects: “No more jobs!”
“It was like that,” Roberts says, insisting that she was serious in 2010 when she turned in her green tights and her harness and said she was finished with Neverland. But like the pivotal character in any good heist flick, Roberts, who’ll return to the role of the little boy who won’t grow up when Peter Pan opens at Playhouse on the Square this weekend, has been pulled back into the game for one last shot.
This is great news for holiday audiences who’ll get to see Roberts flying high in a role she’s very nearly perfected. But for Roberts, who also played Harper, the waifish hustler in Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer’s breakthrough The Poor & Hungry, opening weekend will be bittersweet. She will miss attending a party for the film’s long-awaited DVD release.
“People are posting like mad on Facebook, saying they’re looking forward to the party at Black Lodge Video,” Roberts says with a sigh. She’ll have to settle for soaring and crowing like a rooster and evading Captain Hook.
“I told [director] Jordan Nichols I needed to think about doing Peter Pan again,” says Roberts, who loves the part and the show but had needed to take a break from Tiger Lilly and the Lost Boys. “He said he wasn’t asking.”
Roberts and Nichols have pooled their institutional memories to remount and improve on the classic Playhouse on the Square Peter Pan.
“It should be just as much fun for the parents as for the kids,” she says.
“Peter Pan” at Playhouse on the Square, November 22nd-January 5th. Playhouseonthesquare.org
The Return of “the Poor & Hungry” DVD Release Party at Black Lodge Video, Friday, November 22nd, 9 p.m.
