In the land of Neverland, where little kids never grow up and swashbuckling pirates can never seem to defeat a team of rough-and-tumble young orphans, imagination rules. So too does it rule in the gymnasium of the Tisbury School, where on Friday night a group of some two dozen kids will channel the despised clan of Captain Hook and the always-triumphant lost boys, in the school’s second production of a musical version of the hit movie Hook.

People coming to the play expecting to see a bunch of middle schoolers brandishing toy swords will be disappointed. The action, too, is always imaginary. Director Christopher Abbot said that’s for the best.

“I pretty much told them from the beginning that we would be using minimal props. And I gave them the justification that, in a sense, this is inside the characters’ heads,” he said this week, days before opening night.

This idea follows that of the film version of Hook, in which a grown-up Peter Pan fails to see many of the wonders of Neverland until he opens his own imagination to them. “Nothing materializes until suddenly, he does believe,” said Mr. Abbot.

When the school first put on the play, back in 1995, the actors used real props, including plastic swords that kept breaking in rehearsal. This time, the actors, made up of Tisbury seventh and eighth graders, were asked to play with the idea of imaginary props, in the way that the movie version also had.

“I figured this time, let’s take that element of imagination and apply it in a practical way,” said Mr. Abbot.

“I think we’re going to see how it works,” said Cathy Weiss, longtime choreographer for the Tisbury School’s theatre productions. In rehearsal, she substituted sticks for the real thing, to help the students get used to the movements. “I had them pretend they had swords, which didn’t work. So I gave them short sticks, which helped them figure the procedure out,” she said.

At their rehearsal in the Tisbury School gymnasium Wednesday night, the kids still hadn’t quite mastered the mock sword fighting, but Ms. Weiss hoped for the best. Luckily, the swashbuckling scenes in the play are minimal.

“It’s been difficult with no swords, but I can only imagine it might have been more difficult with swords,” she said.

“With the imaginary sword fighting, it’s actually easier, because they don’t have to worry about whether they’re hitting each others’ swords,” said Mr. Abbot.

“When you’re trying to deliver lines and fight, professional actors have trouble doing that. The last time we did it, it was so distracting . . . This way, their lines are perfect, and you can hear them perfectly.”

The make-believe spreads to other areas of the play as well, including the musical score.

“The whole idea of Neverland is it’s a place of imagination,” said costume designer Alice Robinson. Where else could the musical genius of the Beatles and Michael Jackson be fused around a story that involves a pirate kidnapping, a talking fairy, and a flying middle-aged lawyer?

“The last time we added some very traditional, Broadway-type music,” said Mr. Abbot. This time, they decided to try something a little edgier. Some of the old favorites are there, including a solo version of When You’re Alone, which was the only song actually included in the film version of Hook. But this time, Granny Wendy gets a solo of John Lennon’s In My Life, while the lost boys pay tribute to the late Michael Jackson with a rendition of Beat It, complete with dance moves from the legendary Thriller music video.

Ms. Weiss was laughing and beaming at the Wednesday night dress rehearsal as the motley crew of lost boys, dressed in rags, burst onto the stage with moonwalk moves that might have impressed Mr. Jackson himself.

“The nice part of that was it was a true collaboration, because Cathy had some ideas and the kids were just taken with the Thriller video,” said Mr. Abbot. So they put it all together just to see what might come out. “And it works. I think it works amazingly well. The kids just have a blast with it,” he said.

The show will play for two nights only in the Tisbury gymnasium, tonight and Saturday night at 7 p.m. And when the final curtain closes, so too will close the final show of Mr. Abbot’s role as director of school plays. At the end of the school year, he will retire from his seventh and eighth grade social studies classroom, and from the school stage.

“My first show was in 1980, so this is my 30th year. And over that span I think I’ve done 25 shows,” he said. And he’s confident that while the kids did meet a few obstacles in mingling the real and the imaginary for Hook, they’ll be able to pull everything together this weekend.

“It’s a difficult concept,” said Mr. Abbot. “And these kids have done a great job with it.”