Staff at the Water Mill Museum are accepting applications for its summer members art exhibit, to be held at the museum from June 20 to July 8. Photographers, sculptors, printmakers, paint­­ers, and others have been invited to take part in the non-juried show at which their work can be sold.

    Forms can be downloaded at watermillmuseum.org; the deadline is June 8. Each artist is limited to a single work, subject to size and other restrictions. The museum will keep 30 percent of sales. Membership, which is a prerequisite to be included in the show, costs $25, or $30 for a family.

   Four Bay Street Theatre supporters will be honored Saturday at a benefit dinner at East Hampton Point restaurant that will feature a performance by Joy Behar. David Bray, Ana R. Daniel, Michael Grim, and James Osburn will be thanked — and roasted — during the 8 p.m. event. Tickets cost $175, or $300 for a couple.

    Mr. Bray was one of Bay Street’s original board members and a founding partner of Allan Schneider Associates, once one of the South Fork’s more notable real estate firms. Ms. Daniel was the founding chairwoman of the Bay Street Theatre’s board. Mr. Grim and Mr. Osburn are the owners of the Bridgehampton Florist, which contributes to the theater regularly. Reservations are with the Bay Street Theatre main office in Sag Harbor.

    Actors in the Round Table Theatre Company and Academy’s Speaking Shakespeare class will make their final presentations on Monday at 7 p.m. on the John Drew stage at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Admission is free to see the fruits of an eight-week master class on the Bard’s sonnets and scenes.

    A festive crowd will fill the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill for its annual Spring Fling, this the first in its new Herzog and de Meuron building. Drinks, including ales from the South­ampton Publick House, hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction, and music by Todd Barrie are promised. The co-chairwomen for this event are Susan Davis and Nancy Hardy.

    Auction lots include a Hampton Hills Golf and Country Club membership and V.I.P. passes to the Hampton Classic, among a range of other goods and services donated by local merchants. Tickets, at $225 per person, are for sale in the Parrish business office or at parrishart.org.

    Jack Youngerman’s talk tomorrow at the Parrish is sold out. Those hoping to hear Mr. Youngerman talk about his art can add their names to a waiting list in person the evening of the talk at the museum.

   The Southampton Cultural Center’s Rising Stars piano series will present Di Wu, a prizewinner in the 2009 Van Cliburn competition, on Saturday at 7 p.m. She will perform works by Bach, Chopin, Scriabin, and Ravel.

    Ms. Wu, who was born in China and now lives in the United States, made her professional debut at age 14 with the Beijing Philharmonic and has since appeared with orchestras around the world. Her most recent appearance in Tokyo, at an arena concert recorded and released by Epic Records in Japan, took place before an audience of over 11,000. Tickets to her performance at South­ampton Cultural Center cost $15. Admission is free to students under 21.

   This is a review of three cookbooks, three cookbooks that could not be more different from each other. One is a wonderful tribute to local restaurants, their chefs, and the farmers and fishermen who inspire and provide for them. One is a charming and original book about cooking with flowers. And one is possibly the stupidest publication ever, call it quackery in a crockpot.

    “The Hamptons and Long Island Homegrown Cookbook” (Voyageur Press, $30) is by Leeann Lavin with beautiful photographs by Lindsey Morris and Jennifer Calais Smith. And yes, you must have the name Hamptons in any local book if it is to sell, according to publishers. The only problem with a book like this is it is practically obsolete as soon as it is published. Restaurants come and go out here, faster than the seasons, it seems.

    The format of the book is wonderful. There are in-depth profiles of the chefs on one page, with a profile of their favorite farmer or fisherman or cheesemaker on the other. These are then followed by numerous recipes from the restaurants. I loved reading about the inspirations and backgrounds of such chefs as Kevin Penner, Jason Weiner, and Gretchen Menser. However, there are so many misspellings, booboos, and various and sundry other mistakes in the book, that I sure do hope the recipes are accurate.

    First let’s correct name spellings. It’s Jackson Pollock, not Pollack. Jimmy Buffett, Eric Fischl, David Loewenberg. It’s tuna tartare, not tartar, piccata not picatta, skagen not sgaken. A few facts: Michael Rozzi never became the chef at East Hampton Grill when Hillstone Group took over Della Femina, nor does East Hampton Grill still have “walls lined with graphic art portraits featuring some of the restaurant’s more storied customers and clients” as it did when Jerry Della Femina was at the helm. The only caricatures left are of Jerry and his wife, Judy, and they, alas, have been relegated to the restroom entrances. I don’t think Bryan Futterman taught cooking classes at La Fondita, “a family style Italian salumeria,” according to the book. I’m pretty sure La Fondita is a cute little Mexican takeout joint on the highway serving refreshing horchatas and dainty fish tacos on homemade tortillas. The Grill on Pantigo was long empty before the book’s publication. James Carpenter, formerly of the Living Room, is described as “circumspect.” I have worked with this gentleman and he is sooo not circumspect. Oh, and it’s not “The Living Room at the Maidstone Inn,” it’s c/o the Maidstone, formerly the Maidstone Arms. Am I being nitpicky? Maybe, but I think the book could have used an editor and fact checker.

    That said, other highlights of the book are the inclusion of North and South Shore restaurants, some I had never heard of. The North Fork and Shelter Island get some attention with North Fork Table and Vine Street Cafe, among others. The book promises “local, seasonable, sustainable, farm fresh,” and it delivers with tempting recipes like Cuvée oysters, pan-seared local scallops with summer succotash, frisee salad and crispy fried beets, warm berry cobbler with lemon verbena ice cream.

    You can try a simply grilled Montauk swordfish from Vine Street Cafe or drive yourself mad attempting the short-lived Southfork Kitchen’s Korean-style P.E.I. mussels, a recipe that could drive Charlie Trotter and Thomas Keller combined crazy.

    “Cooking With Flowers” (Quirk Books, $24.95) by Miche Bacher with photographs by Miana Jun is a jewel of a book. I knew you could toss some nasturtium petals on a salad or use organic edible orchids to garnish a cake, but tulips, hollyhocks, dandelions, and sunflowers? There are so many ways to use the flowers of our gardens, it is mind-boggling.

    Prudently, the book begins with a reminder that you absolutely must use organic and/or homegrown flowers with no chemicals. Also, if you have allergies to certain plants, chances are you shouldn’t be using them in your cooking. Then the book proceeds to enchant you with the lore and nicknames and flavors and medicinal properties of each. Who knew that dandelions were also known as swine snout, puffball, Irish daisy, and wet-the-bed flower? That orchids taste of cucumber and endive? That steamed sunflower buds taste quite like steamed artichokes?

    “Cooking With Flowers” goes through the alphabet of edible flowers, educating you with the background, seasonality, culinary uses, and what you need to do to prepare each for cooking. Some are incredibly labor intensive, such as those using the tiny blooms of dianthus; 50 to 70 flowers are needed to yield one cup of petals. Others are as simple as coating zucchini flowers in tempura batter and frying.

    The recipes are wide-ranging, from lilac sorbet to tulip martinis to nasturtium pizza. The kooky popcorn chive blossom cupcakes and coconut lilac tapioca are at the top of my must-try-next list. The food styling and photography are also just so pretty and original. The back of the book is filled with basic recipes such as for drying or candying flowers, simple syrups, jams, jellies, ice cubes, vodkas, vinegars, and more. The tone is helpful, fun, and generous. “Cooking With Flowers” combines all the ingredients of a good cookbook: engaging narrative, inspiring recipes, and beautiful photography. Miche Bacher exhorts us in the last words of her book “work hard, but take time to eat your roses.”

    “It’s All Good” (Grand Central Life & Style, $32) by Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Turshen is mostly all bad. Or mostly unnecessary. I had heard a lot of Gwyneth-bashing before I delved into this book and felt it was quite unfair. Is it jealousy? She’s pretty and talented, and I loved her first cookbook, “My Father’s Daughter.” That book was warm and loving and had fun, healthy recipes — the brown rice with kale and scallions is one of my favorites. But the critics are right. This is a silly, bordering on irresponsible, book. On the plus side, if you like looking at Gwyneth, there are 36 photographs of her! Makeup free, sunshiny fresh, looking like images from a luxurious Brunello Cucinelli catalog, all taupes and grays and cashmere and East End light, although there are a few of her looking really Daisy Duke-ish in denim cutoff short shorts.

    The book came about cuz she got a headache and thought she was going to die. This was a panic attack. She went to gobs and gobs of doctors and learned that she had a gazillion health problems, including blood parasites and vitamin deficiencies. Does this mean we should disregard her previous healthy lifestyle advice? No, we should just disregard the navel gazing. The doctor she bonded most with practices what he calls psychospiritual nutrition and uses techniques from Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, anthroposophical medicine, acu­puncture, and energy healing. Anthroposophy is based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. In a nutshell, through a prescribed method of self-discipline, cognitional experience of the spiritual world can be achieved.

    On page 278 Gwyneth shares a recipe for a hard-boiled egg. Gwynnie! May I call you Gwynnie? No? Then may I call you Nurse Ratched, because I feel like McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and you are torturing me with this beyond-ascetic tome. The first recipe begins with “I’m allergic to oats.” She is also forbidden by her doctor to indulge in coffee, alcohol, dairy, sugar, shellfish, gluten, and soy. This is an “elimination diet” which the book gleefully proclaims Gwyneth goes on “when she needs to lose weight . . . and now you can too!” Whee! I’d rather eat a tapeworm.

    This book also has a recipe for roast chicken. Chicken. A recipe for sliced avocado on a piece of toast. These aren’t recipes; they’re sentences.

    The one piece of advice that I find particularly disturbing is the recommendation to use xylitol in place of sugar: “Xylitol is a natural sweetener made from fruit and vegetable fibers. We know it sounds super-medical and scientific, but it’s actually an INCREDIBLY HEALTHY [caps mine] alternative to sugar, is remarkably good for your teeth, and works really well in baking.” Nurse Ratched, are you shilling for Dupont Labs? A piece of gum with xylitol has double the amount needed to kill a rat. It is poisonous to dogs. Xylitol is derived from xylan, extracted from corn, sugar cane, or birch. It is a molecular cousin to sugar and is created using a multi-step chemical reaction with sulfuric acid, calcium oxide, phosphoric acid, and active charcoal. The end result is a bleached, powdery blend of sugary alcohols that tastes sweet but is not absorbed by the body. It will cause diarrhea, which Gwyneth’s doctor does mention. On page 279 the recipe for orange marmalade calls for three oranges and one full cup of xylitol. Nuff said.

Click for recipes

You are a whore. You are an old whore.

Everyone hates you. God hates you.

He pretty much has had it with all women.

But, let me tell you, especially you. You like

To think that you can think faster than

The rest of us — hah! We drive the car

In which you’re a crash dummy! So

Why do you defy our Executive Committee

Which will never cede its floor to you? If a pig

Flew out of a tree & rose to become

A blimp — you would write a poem

About it, ignoring the Greater Good,

The hard facts of gravity. You deserve to be

Flattened by the Greater Good — pigs don’t

Fly, yet your arrogance is that of a blimp

Which has long forgotten its place on this earth.

Big arrogance unmoored from its launchpad

Floating free, up with mangy Canadian honkers,

Up with the spy satellites and the ruined

Ozone layer which is, btw, caused by your breath,

Because you were born to ruin everything, hacking

Into the inspiration of the normal human ego.

You are not Queen Tut, honey, you are not

Even a peasant barmaid, you are an aristocrat

Of Trash, land mine of exploding rhinestones,

Crown of thorns, cabal of screech bats!

I am telling you this as an old friend,

Who is offering advice for your own good —

Change now or we will have to Take Measures —

If you know what I mean, which you do —

& now let’s hear one of your fucked-up poems:

let’s hear you refute this truth any way you can.

   “Hate Mail,” from 2012, is included in “The Best of the Best American Poetry,” out earlier this month from Scribner. Carol Muske-Dukes lives part time in Springs and teaches English and creative writing at the University of Southern California.

“The Underground

Railroad on Long Island”

Kathleen G. Velsor

History Press, $19.99

   In recent years, the Underground Railroad has received extensive attention. The National Park Service’s Network to Freedom and the Underground Railroad Heritage Trail of the New York State Office of Parks promote understanding of the movement. On Long Island, Kathleen G. Velsor, a professor at the State University at Old Westbury, has devoted decades to researching local connections to the Underground Railroad, focusing on the activities of members of the Religious Society of Friends (popularly known as Quakers). She contributed chapters to books on the subject published by the Queens Historical Society in 1999 and 2006 and wrote a young-adult historical novel in 2005.

    Now she has presented the results of her years of research in a 144-page paperback that has more than 55 illustrations, including vintage and recent photographs of homes and meetinghouses, period engravings, and maps.

    The Underground Railroad refers to the process by which enslaved people in the South escaped northward in the years before the Civil War, assisted by abolitionists and other sympathizers. Since aiding slave fugitives was illegal, documentation of Railroad activities is sparse and often limited to oral accounts passed down in families and churches.

    Many today do not realize that slavery ever existed in New York. On Long Island in 1771, 17 percent of the population was black and virtually all were enslaved. By 1790, slaves were 32 percent of the population in Kings County (today’s Brooklyn), 14 percent in Queens (including present-day Nassau County), and 7 percent in Suffolk County and also in the Town of East Hampton. Suffolk was the only county in the state where free blacks outnumbered slaves. In 1799 New York adopted a gradual manumission law. Those born after July 4, 1799, would be free, females at age 25 and males at 28. Later legislation ended all slavery in New York in 1827.

     In her recent book, “The Underground Railroad on Long Island: Friends in Freedom,” Ms. Velsor focuses on a number of Quaker families, including the Hickses, Jacksons, Motts, and Posts. The Quakers have kept excellent genealogical records, but providing names of so many relatives and their relationships risks bogging down readers.

    Elias Hicks (1748-1830) is featured for his antislavery stance. He helped convince fellow Quakers to manumit and educate their slaves. In 1794 he was the “driving force” in organizing the Charity Society on Long Island, which opened three schools for blacks before public schools existed.

    Ms. Velsor also identifies several Quaker homes in Jericho connected with the Underground Railroad. According to a 1939 account, the Ketchams “often took in runaways.” The attic of the Jackson-Malcolm house apparently was used as a school for fugitives from the South. A linen closet on the second floor of the home of Valentine Hicks hid a staircase to the attic where escapees may have stayed, according to family stories. Largely as a result of Ms. Velsor’s research, the Town of Oyster Bay recently landmarked this site, better known today as the Maine Maid Inn.

   Upstate, in Rochester, Amy and Isaac Post were active in antislavery activities. Correspondence from their Westbury friends and relatives offers some clues to fugitive activities on Long Island. In Old Westbury, the Old Place home of the Hicks family on Post Road had hiding places recorded in family accounts. Other locations Ms. Velsor identifies as associated with the Underground Railroad include the Jerusalem “Brush” area in today’s Wantagh, the Townsend family’s Mill Hill house in Oyster Bay, the Roslyn gristmill, and the Mott homestead in Sands Point.

    Henry Highland Garnet’s early years in Smithtown are familiar to historians, but Ms. Velsor has expanded the material on the subject by providing details of his family’s escape from New Market, Md., in 1824. Less well known is the experience of the 27 people who, aided by North Carolina Quakers, found temporary refuge in 1835 with members of the Jericho and Bethpage Meetings.

    In her enthusiasm for the subject, Ms. Velsor includes information somewhat tangential to Long Island and the Underground Railroad. Some examples are the history of Quakers in New York in the 1600s, information on slavery in New York City, and the Underground Railroad in Westchester and Dutchess Counties. Quakers were not the only Long Islanders to be involved in antislavery activities and the Underground Railroad. Black churches, including St. David’s A.M.E. Zion Church in Sag Harbor’s Eastville, may also have aided escaped slaves, although Ms. Velsor does not mention them.

    At times, Ms. Velsor uses the first person, explaining how she conducted her research through interviews and travels. This personalization enhances the reader’s interest. Unfortunately, a number of errors have crept into the text, such as incorrect dates and quotations, and the misspelling of names.

   Ms. Velsor often uses language such as “is believed to,” “could have been,” or “it is reasonable to believe” without citing definitive evidence. Most of the few written accounts (based on oral traditions in families) were not set down until more than a hundred years after the events occurred. Ms. Velsor concludes that “the story of how the Quakers on Long Island helped enslaved people to freedom should no longer be subject to speculation.” However, this writer doubts that Long Island’s role in the Underground Railroad was as extensive as Ms. Velsor claims. It would have been a detour for most northern escapees.

    I commend Ms. Velsor for her tenacious research over many years and for developing relevant educational materials. She has assembled a great deal of related information, and her book joins the few others on Long Island’s black history, specifically Grania Marcus’s “Discovering the African-American Experience in Suffolk County, 1620-1860” (second edition, 1995) and Lynda R. Day’s “Making a Way to Freedom: A History of African-Americans on Long Island” (1997).

“American Antislavery Writings”

Edited by James G. Basker

Library of America, $40

   James Basker’s anthology of edited readings, “American Antislavery Writings,” provides in its 963 pages more than 216 selections by 158 writers, plus 22 illustrations. Introductions to each selection and a useful chronology provide context, and 48 pages of notes make this an exemplary reference work.

    Seven of the eight earliest writings included, spanning the years 1688 and 1759, are by Quakers, most from Philadelphia and environs. Some selections are by statesmen (including George Washington, Benjamin Frank­lin, and of course Abraham Lincoln), poets and writers (e.g., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), abolitionists (William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, and John Brown), and former slaves (Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northrup, and Harriet Jacobs), to mention just a few. Nearly one-fourth of the writers were African-Americans, and one-fourth were women.

    A few of the authors have connections to Long Island. Jupiter Hammon, who was enslaved by the Lloyd family, is represented by his 1782 poem “Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant.” The editor notes his careful “resistance to the master on theological grounds, not daring, as a slave, to utter a claim based on civil or natural rights.” (Unfortunately, Queens Village is wrongly located as “now part of New York City,” rather than on Lloyd Neck, north of Huntington.) Also included is a 1774 letter by the better-known black poet Phillis Wheatley to Samson Occom, the Mohegan minister who was ordained in East Hampton in 1759.

    As a U.S. senator, Rufus King spoke against the admission of Missouri as a slave state in 1819. King’s country estate in Jamaica, Queens, is now a historic house museum (King Manor). The argument by former President John Quincy Adams before the Supreme Court in 1841 in the Amistad case is quoted, defending the Africans captured off Montauk.

    Another author in the anthology, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was born in Litchfield, Conn., a year after her father, Lyman Beecher, left his 12-year ministry at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church in 1810. Her 1842 novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was the “most celebrated” of American antislavery writing.

    Long Island’s Walt Whitman, whose birthplace in Huntington Station is now a state historic site, is represented by his 1860 poem “Mannahatta,” celebrating “The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!” William Cullen Bryant, whose country home in Roslyn Harbor (Cedarmere) is owned and under restoration by Nassau County, has two poems, “The African Chief” and “The Death of Lincoln.”

    Henry Highland Garnet appears in both books, having spent two of his teenage years in Smithtown as a fugitive. After he became a famous minister and abolitionist, he was the first African-American to address the U.S. Congress, one of two of his speeches reprinted in the anthology.

    Although no Long Island Quakers are included in “Antislavery Writings,” they were in the forefront of those who early freed their slaves and educated free blacks. Quakers acted on their beliefs by their participation in the Underground Railroad. Ms. Velsor’s and Mr. Basker’s books both provide extensive information on the efforts to end slavery. They are welcome additions to local history and the literature of antislavery.

   Natalie A. Naylor is a retired Hofstra University history professor and author of “Women in Long Island’s Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives,” published last year. She lives in Uniondale.

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert, which will feature Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” and Bach’s Cantata No. 79. Those wishing to audition are invited to sit in for the first rehearsal on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church in Bridgehampton. Auditions will take place on April 29 with Mark Mangini, the society’s music director, and most rehearsals will be on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the church. Those auditioning should be prepared to sing a short song, for which accompaniment will be provided. They will also be asked to demonstrate sight-reading ability. The concert will be at the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton on June 29. Auditions can be scheduled by calling 204-9402.

   First love and first time at the theater should be joyful experiences, and when artfully combined, as in the Springs Community Theater production of “Peter Pan” at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater, they are simply a blast.

    The theater was packed for the Sunday matinee, and the energy of the little ones in the audience, with an occasional mommy or daddy thrown in, was palpable at the curtain.

    For many of those in the house — and some of those on the stage, as well — “Peter Pan” would be their first experience of live theater. Would that the rest of their firsts be as joyful as this one.

    Based on the play by Scottish writer Sir James Matthew Barrie, which was itself based on the novel by Sir Barrie, “Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” the musical in its current form was put together by Jerome Robbins, director and choreographer of the 1954 Broadway production, starring Mary Martin in the title role.

To give us the show we have today, the work of the initial composer and lyricist team, Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh, was augmented with songs by the brilliant team of Jule Styne, the composer, and the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

The Springs Community Theater production of the play stars Jayne Freedman in the title role and was produced by Barbara Mattson. Ms. Freedman said in a recent interview that she’d always wanted to play the role, and the audience can see why as she joyfully sings and dances her way through the show. She has a fine belt voice, which she displays whether planted on terra firma or flying through the air.

    Speaking of flying, the “oohs” and “aahs” from the audience when Peter Pan first enters and when the Darling family children, Wendy (Paula Guerra), John (Dylan Andrada), and Michael (Colin Freedman), first fly through the air made the theater vibrate with happiness.

    The Darling children are just that. Ms. Guerra’s Wendy is a shy one, but charmingly so. Wendy is on the verge of first love, of kissing and wanting to be kissed by a boy. She is just a breath away from that point. It is a breath that Peter will not give her, for to do so would mean growing up and having to wear a tie.

    Co-starring as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook is the always-funny Josh Gladstone. He had the children in the audience booing and hissing him on every gleefully evil entrance. I was laughing so hard, I was afraid I might roll into the improvised orchestra pit, to my right in the house of the John Drew. Mr. Gladstone may have left a bite mark or two on the scenery, but what the heck, he runs the place and knows what these things cost.

    Actually, he is to be commended twice, once for his performance and again in his role as artistic director of the John Drew, for his foresight in bringing Springs Community Theater into the space.

    For your first time in the audience of a musical or, more important, your first time performing onstage in a musical, to be in such a beautiful theater as this, is awesome.

    This production accomplishes something many loftier productions often fail to do — connect the audience to the players and vice versa. It puts the “community” in community theater.

    Community theater should not be confused with amateur theater, as this production attests, not when you have strong professional elements supporting the players.

    One of those elements is Flying by Foy, the company that makes all this flying not only possible, but fun.

    The company was founded by Peter Foy, who rigged and ran the flying apparatus for the original “Peter Pan” on Broadway, and it sets the standard for flying performers, whether in a community theater production or at the Super Bowl. When you see a performer fly onto the stage at a concert, in all probability, Flying by Foy is in the wings.

    The musical direction by Max Feldschuh of the three-man orchestra, which included Mr. Feldschuh on keyboard, Stuart Feldschuh on bass, and Michael Bennett on drums, was excellent.

    Some of the young actors on stage are new to all this, but with more seasoned performers in key roles, the production flows nicely, a credit to the co-directors, Ms. Freedman and Diana Horn.

    Anita Boyer, who is credited as co-choreographer with Ms. Freedman, gives us a hoofing Tiger Lily. She skillfully hits metal to wood, giving many in the audience another “first time” experience — tap dancing.

    She holds down the stage with her troop of Indians (doubt this would have been written in 2013!) during the scene change from the children’s bedroom to Neverland, and her percussive sounds captured the audience.

    One of her troupe, Riley Goldstein, brings a grace and beauty to the stage as she does a “bird dance.”

    Michael Horn’s Smee would hold its own in any production of “Peter Pan,” and his fellow band of pirates are wonderfully wicked.

    The band of Lost Boys is delightful, with Yori Johnson’s Slightly giving a good, strong balance to his higher-pitched playmates, both physically and musically.

    Colin Freedman does a wonderful duet at the end of “The Crow Reprise” with Ms. Freedman, his mother in real life. As in much of the show, the reprise involves the audience, one of the examples of why this show is an excellent first experience of live theater. Theater isn’t a TV or a movie screen or a tablet the viewer is looking at, it is real people. Theater works because the audience and the players want it to work.

    Peter Pan’s challenge to the audience, that the only way to save Tinker Bell’s life is if they all truly believe, is the challenge all plays put to their audiences.

    When a character dies on stage, we in the audience understand that the person playing the character hasn’t really died, yet we suspend that disbelief, and allow ourselves to accept what we see as if it were truth. The relationship between audience and players is learned through experience.

    The little girl behind me turned to her mother early in the show and asked about Peter Pan, “Mom, is that a girl?”

    The answer is, “Yes, that is a girl, and it is Peter Pan.”

    A good first-time lesson.

    There will be two more“Peter Pan” shows, tomorrow and Saturday, both at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for those under 18.