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by J.M. Barrie, directed by Christopher Newton

Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

May 26-October 28, 2001

“The Dark Side of Not Growing Up”

In 1987 a late opener at the Shaw Festival was Ian Judge's production of J.M. Barrie's 1904 play "Peter Pan".  It received such critical and popular acclaim that Christopher Newton and Duncan McIntosh restaged it for the 1988 season making it one of the Festival's biggest hits.  Rarely does the Shaw Festival mount new productions of works by authors other than Shaw.  So one might well wonder why Christopher Newton wished to revisit this play. 

It takes only a first glimpse of Never Land to realize that Newton has something quite different to say about this play.  In Judge's hands the play became the kind of "Boy's Own" adventure story familiar from such adaptations as pantos, musicals and the Disney cartoon.  Cameron Porteous' wonderfully detailed sets made Peter's fantasy world seem real.  Why Peter would never want to grow up and leave his exciting world was obvious, especially since Judge heavily satirized the real world of London and its mind-numbing conformity.  Newton makes this "Peter Pan" into his "Tempest".  In his second last season as Artistic Director, Newton seems to be saying farewell to play-acting and acknowledging the power of a world ruled by time. 

Newton has seen that the approach most familiar to us assumes that Peter's vision is not flawed.  He sees Wendy not Peter as the central character and Peter's world not hers as the danger.  Since so many of the Lost Boys escape Never Land in order to live in the real world, Peter's refusal to join them becomes more perverse than heroic.  Never Land is more a world of nightmares than dreams.  The text clearly states that each of the groups of Never Land live solely to kill the others and where all seasons occur at once--ideas traditionally associated with chaos.  Peter's famously claims "To die will be an awfully big adventure".  But our narrator tells us, "If he could get the hang of the thing his cry might become 'To live would be an awfully big adventure!'"  From Wendy's perspective Never Land is both tawdry, terrifying and devoid of love.  Life, not a quest for death, should be celebrated. 

Newton's view makes the parallel between Peter and Hook clear.  Each claims to be a leader but in fact those under them do what they please.  Peter refuses to grow up while Hook is afraid of time (i.e., the crocodile with the clock ticking inside it).  Both make noble speeches ultimately devoid of content.  The primary difference between the two is that in Wendy Peter has found a mother (or source of order) for the Lost Boys, while the pirates have none.  Never Land is a place where the fun of play-acting has deadly consequences.

In line with Newton's interpretation, Sue LePage's design and Kevin Lamotte's lighting emphasize the artifice of the story.  Unlike Porteous' sets which filled the stage with three-dimensional realism, LePage's clearly look like sets placed on a bare stage.  The Darling's bedroom is two-dimensional as is our first view of Never Land.  The longer we are in Never Land the more realistic the sets become--first with the Lost Boys underground hide-out and then with the pirates' ship which this time looks more like a scrap-metal freighter than a frigate.  As imagined by Newton and Lepage, Never Land is like a rubbish tip of popular escapism.  The mermaids dance to Gershwin's "Shall We Dance?", Hook listens to the Gypsy Kings in his cabin, the Lost Boys sing a World War I song, Tinker Bell is dressed like a 1920s flapper and the pirates look like contemporary gang members

Newton's new view also effects how the primary roles are played and reveals the work as a critique on male/female roles.  We see that Barrie, in contrast to the usual 19th-century appraisal, sees men as fickle fantasists and women as sensible realists.  This goes a long way to explaining in a more profound way why the men in the play "need a mother".  Newton adds the character of the maid Liza (implied by his 1929 preface) who serves as a narrator and whose commentary derives from Barrie's own and from his 1908 novel "Peter and Wendy".  This narrator both distances the action from the audience and provides a female perspective on it that emphasizes the dangers of becoming a Lost Boy and of giving in to the nightmare world of Never Land.

Sherry Smith is perfect as this narrator making her schoolmarmish enough to give her character but forthright enough for us to grant the truth of what she says.  She is also delightful as the bird who saves Peter from drowning in (symbolically) her perambulator-shaped nest.  As Mrs. Darling, Goldie Semple exudes a warmth, humour and love that makes the children's' desire for escape seem all the more capricious.  Fiona Byrne has the plum role as Wendy, who we see in this production not only as a girl but in the extended 1908 epilogue as a mature woman with her own daughter.  The distinction she makes between the two is remarkable.  In the younger we see an infatuation with Peter she thinks is love; in the older a rueful recognition that her infatuation was just that.  The two other darling children are well played by Pete Treadwell (John) and Devon Tullock (Michael).

Newton, who played Mr. Darling/Captain Hook in 1987-88, directs Jim Mezon to play it in a totally different way.  Mezon succeeds in what one might think the impossible task of making Mr. Darling more quirkily interesting than Captain Hook.  No doubt most people will miss the villain's usual flamboyance, but underplaying the role makes it seem that Peter's view of his archenemy is inflated.  Dylan Trowbridge is superb as Peter giving his energy the demonic edge of an incubus and seeming willfully not to want to understand the real world Wendy values.  His desire not to be touched seems pathological rather than merely whimsical.  As a ball of light Tinker Bell is given an obnoxious electronic voice appropriately in tune with the rather nasty things she says.  In corporeal form, Jane Johanson gives her a mixture of grace, mean-spiritedness and devotion. 

Among the Lost Boys Mike Wasko (Tootles) and Neil Barclay (Slightly) stand out, the first as pleasantly dim-witted and second as a would-be know-it-all.  Among the pirates Norman Browning makes Starkey an ineffectual grumbler while Bernard Behrens is hilarious as the preoccupied tailor Smee.

While exposing the deeper themes that Barrie himself came to see in his play, Newton does not overlook spectacle.  Besides the beautifully executed flying sequences, John Stead has staged two impressive fights in two different styles--a hugely enjoyable minimalist underwater battle in the first half and the most realistically chaotic slugfest I've seen on stage in the second.

Few people going to "Peter Pan" will be prepared to have to think about what the play means.  But for those open to Newton's approach the play will never seem merely a child's fairy tale again.  At the end children were suitably delighted, but Newton has so powerfully staged the epilogue about tyranny of time and the transience of innocence, parents' sniffling and subdued sobs could be heard throughout the auditorium.  This may be a production that not only entertains families but brings them closer together.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Dylan Trowbridge. ©2001 Tim Leyes.