Child’s play: Find family-friendly theater in unexpected places

Goodbye, Willy Loman and Sweeney Todd. Hello, Peter Pan and Astro Boy.

Local theaters that don’t generally put on family-friendly shows are taking a tip from popular kid-focused venues, including Imagination Stage and Adventure Theatre, and staging their own age-spanning entertainment.

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That doesn’t mean, however, that they’ll be handling audiences with kid gloves. Pixar (the movie studio behind “Up” and “Toy Story”) has set a precedent: It’s just as important to please the ticket buyers as their diminutive companions.

“You can’t do bad children’s theater just to do children’s theater, because then you’re really just doing a disservice,” says Joshua Morgan, co-artistic director of No Rules Theatre Company, the group behind the thought-provoking shows “Stop Kiss” and “Touch.” (No Rules stages “Peter Pan” this month.)

For some, the motivation to open their doors to kids also may have something to do with profit, not to mention grooming a future audience.

“The thinking is it’s rather recession proof,” says Leslie A. Kobylinski, artistic director of First Draft at Charter Theatre, which seeks to expand Washington theater audiences. Last year the nonprofit group collaborated with 1st Stage in McLean on “Jack and the Bean-Stalk” after a promising reading at the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage festival.

“We actually had one of our largest crowds ever at Page-to-Stage when we put up ‘Jack and the Bean-Stalk,’ ” Kobylinski says.

“Usually we do edgier new play work, but we filled the Family Theater at the Kennedy Center, which is big for a reading.”

For Kobylinski, the demand was clear. And this month, theaters are responding by mounting shows designed to entertain all ages. So, give the babysitter a break, and have a night on the town with the whole family.

‘Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers’

Best for age 10 and older

One look at the darker title of No Rules Theatre Company’s incarnation of “Peter Pan” and you might wonder whether it’s the same classic children’s tale you grew up with.

“We didn’t make this title up,” Morgan says. “That’s what [‘Peter Pan’ author] J.M. Barrie originally wanted the play to be called, but his producers and publishers were like, ‘That won’t sell.’ ”

This world-premiere rendition, adapted and directed by Michael Lluberes, more accurately follows Barrie’s source material, which was inspired by his childhood. The author’s mother never recovered after her older son and, arguably, favorite child died in a skating accident at age 13. In that vein, “The Boy Who Hated Mothers” begins with the death of Michael Darling — John and Wendy’s brother — and actress Lisa Hodsoll plays the evil Captain Hook and Mrs. Darling.

“We keep equating this to ‘Harry Potter,’ ” Morgan says of the target age group for the show. “There’s nothing overtly sexual about the play; there’s no bad language. But I think the theme of a mother becoming this villainous character — I don’t want a 4-year-old watching that.”

Yet this “Peter Pan” still celebrates the wonder of childlike imagination. The flying scenes, for example, rely on suspending disbelief, not on stage props. “We weren’t interested in rigging anybody up,” Morgan says.