A Darker Capt. Hook

Captain Hook, that shiny meat hook of a hand slashing through the air, has always been a child’s bedtime villain, good for a little nightmare for the tots but really a figure of innocent squealish delight for children raised on Darth Vader.

Now comes actor Stephen Hanan, co-starring with Cathy Rigby in “Peter Pan” at the Pantages, who turns theater’s most popular, dastardly pirate into a menacing psychotic.

“The concept going into this show,” said Broadway veteran Hanan, “was to play Hook more darkly, to catch the lighter side of evil and capture his cavernous abysses of grief and heartbreak. He wants revenge for his childhood. Hook was Barrie’s critique of the British class system, which is all in Barrie’s novel (1911). Hook is the nightmare version of the children’s Daddy” (Mr. Darling, whom Hanan also plays in a double role).

The show is a hard ticket here, closing at the Pantages July 1 and continuing on tour through the country until it winds up on Broadway in December.

Hanan, 43, a classically trained actor from Washington who was Tony-nominated for his work in “Cats,” broke into theater singing Italian arias for money outside the San Francisco Ferry Terminal between 1971 and 1977. “It was the era of Woodstock, and I had just come back from a year on a Fulbright Fellowship in London, where my training ) had made me very idealistic about theater. My agent would only send me out for commercials, so I became a full-tilt hippie.”

He’s written a play about that period, about Haight-Asbury, entitled “Rainbow’s Return,” which was produced last year in Hampton, N.Y. In fact, Hanan has written five plays.

“I act to support my writing habit,” he said with a grin.