It’s opening night, and Senior Kindergarten teacher Dana O’Brien, co-director of the middle school musical, walks out on stage. She asks for laughing, oohing and ahhing, and more. Lights off. Spotlight on. Out comes the narrator of the play, Ladahlord (eighth grader Katherine Holtz), wearing a purple overcoat and top hat with glasses, singing the dazzling theme song of the musical, “Right Before Your Eyes.”

“James and the Giant Peach,” based on British author Roald Dahl’s best-selling 1961 novel, was written by Timothy Allen McDonald and first premiered in 2010 at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.

The middle school version, directed by O’Brien and Middle School music teacher Robert Denien, debuted on March 22 in the Diane B Heller Auditorium. On Wednesday during MX there was a preview of the show for the entire school. Following the premiere, there was another show on Friday, and the closing show, a matinee, on Saturday.

It’s Denien and O’Brien’s second year working together on the Middle School musical, and they make a great team. Denien’s responsible for musical direction and for carrying out most of the organizational work and reaching out to the kids and families, while O’Brien does the choreography and directs the acting.

“Denien has a vision to work on the songs first and then work backwards from there,” O’Brien said. “He’s got a good mind set of how it should work, so we just go with what he says.”

Following “Shrek,” the musical last year, Denien and O’Brien lost most of their lead actors, as many eighth graders starred in the play, but Denien takes a pragmatic approach. “We always like to think about the incoming eighth grade,” Denien said. “You know, where we stand, what kind of personnel we have, what kind of voices we have.”

This year, there were 75 middle schoolers in the play (both cast and crew), around 25 per grade, which is typical due to the no-cut policy. “It really didn’t seem as big as you’d think,” seventh grader and policeman in the show Gray Joseph said, “and it really worked out really well.”

Due to the size of the cast, Denien and O’Brien decided once again to double cast. “We had a huge amount of talented seventh and eighth graders audition,” O’Brien said, “and we felt like double casting would allow more people to have more stage time and more chances to have an opportunity to perform.”

Prep for the musical began before the first rehearsal in January. “We talked this summer and tossed around a couple of ideas,” Denien said, “and ‘James and the Giant Peach’ is the one that stuck with us.”

With four shows, including the Wednesday MX, the doubly-cast leads were given two shows each. The first set of leads got the MX and Friday, and the second set got Thursday night and Saturday afternoon. “Everyone really fit their part,” freshman and Sister Mary Patrick of ‘Sister Act’ Bella Charfoos said. “I think they casted really well.”

James (played by seventh grader Lucas Daskal and eighth grader Tess Wayland) is a young orphan whose only family are his two evil aunts, Spiker (eighth graders Star Rothkopf and Alicia Berger) and Sponge (eighth graders Cece Lopez and Ava Utigard). When a peach in their backyard gets exposed to a potion which makes it and the nearby insects grow abnormally large, the insects take James on a seafaring journey from England to New York City. O’Brien said, “We wanted to make sure it was some sort of fairy tale or fantastical piece that everyone JK-12 could relate to.”

Several scenes benefitted from the double-cast. Right after the intermission, a scared Earthworm (played by seventh graders Akeem Griffin and Mason Drake) stepped out onto a platform in front of the giant peach, with his brown overcoat on and a brown cap with goggles on it. He began singing the a clear crowd favorite, “Plump and Juicy.” A once-scared and quiet earthworm suddenly stripped out of his overcoat to reveal a sparkly gold disco coat with a fluffy pink scarf. Wearing sunglasses with the tropical beat of the song in the background, Griffin and Drake danced along in their own way to their song with confidence, as the crowd roared and applauded.

Another beneficial double-casted character was Ladahlord (played by Katherine Holtz and Sage Holt-Hall). Holtz and Holt-Hall would walk across the stage with subtle intensity and enthusiasm in between scenes to sing the show’s theme song, “Right Before Your Eyes.” These two actors carried on a strong responsibility of opening and closing the show with monologues.

Since rehearsals began, most students came for an hour three times a week to learn the bigger numbers. Leads, on the other hand, had to stay later to learn individual songs and more. Daskal came in three times a week from 3:00 to 6:00. “It’s a hard show,” Denien said a few days before the opening. “We ask a lot of the kids, and they’re putting a lot of good work in.”

The challenge of doing a musical that hasn’t been done much drew the directors to it. “It’s a newer show, so it’s harder than other shows we’ve done,” Denien said, “because there’s not a great example of it being done to watch or take inspiration from.”

Joseph found the newness distinctive too. “Most people had not heard of ‘James and the Giant Peach’ being a musical,” Joseph said. “At least I hadn’t.”

After busy months of hard work, it was time to hit the stage. Daskal was extremely excited.  “There are a lot of really cool parts in it,” Daskal said. “It’s entertaining, funny, and there are some really good songs throughout the musical.”