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Kyle Rowling is standing in a maelstrom of rapiers, cutlasses, feathered tomahawks, very long and very sharp spears, evil, studded maces and cranium-cracking staves.
Not a hair on his black pony-tailed head is disturbed as he moves among the furiously fighting throng.
It's looking bad for the good guys - the Indians, for once.
Captain Hook is getting the better of Coyote Moon. Bill Jukes, the 'orrible pirate afraid of nothing except Hook and soap, is fighting craftily, getting in close to use his dagger on Standing Eagle.
"Lunge, thrust, parry!"
Kyle strolls among them, advising equally the Indians and cut-throats.
"Philip, when you parry, what about you try using your hook to nonchalantly smooth your moustache, just to upset Coyote Moon?" Philip Quast - Captain Hook - slows down the action to consider this and slowly rehearses a smoothing-the moustache move while parrying the fiercely pressing Coyote Moon.
Quast, a double Oliver Award winner, and no mean fencer, is happy to take advice and suggestions from Rowling, the play's fight director. Broadswords, samurai swords, assegais, bayonets, short sword, sabres, scimitars; when it comes to nasty cold steel stuff, he's your man. Rowling has been practising judo, ju-jitsu, kung-fu and tai chi since he was eight.
A member of the Society of Australian Fight Directors, he has trained hundreds of actors in the art of making on-stage fight scenes credible.
Billy Bud for Opera Australia, The Things We Do For Love for Marian Street Theatre, Chasing the Dragon and Cyrano for Sydney Theatre Company, NIDA, Bell Shakespeare - the top companies come to him when they need to choreograph scenes of violence.
"But Pan is something else. For a start there's a final fight scene that involved 35 actors - every one of the on-stage cast except Wendy's mum, Mrs Darling," Rowling said.
So how skilled is the cast?
"Well, Philip Quast is very good. He's done it before in quite a few shows and all I had to do with him was reprise.
"And Troy Woodcroft is very athletic, a dancer by training, and quicksilver on his feet. He will be a dynamic but elegant Peter Pan whether he's sword fighting or just flying around the scenery."
Pan will have the most impressive fight scenes the Australian stage
has seen, he promises. "I could have gone easy and had the cast doing simple fight manoeuvres, but because they've pulled out all the stops in other areas - like the animatronics, pyrotechnics, lighting and sound - I felt I had to do the same. Besides, the cast wouldn't let me. The fight rehearsals are the favourite part of their day!"
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