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by Matt Murray, directed by Tracey Flye

Ross Petty Productions, Elgin Theatre, Toronto

December 8, 2022-January 7, 2023

Captain Hook: “I did it my way”

It’s hard to believe but Peter’s Final Flight is the last panto that Ross Petty ever plans to produce. With this show Petty goes out with a bang. This is one of the most tightly written and best sung pantos he has ever presented and includes more audience interaction than in previous pantos, that interaction being one of defining features of the genre. As a panto that is meant to sum up Petty’s career, Peter’s Final Flight is filled with in-jokes that only frequent Petty panto-goers will understand. Yet, on opening night the love that flowed from the audience to the performers and joy that flowed from the performers to the audience was unmistakable.

Petty did not bring the British-style panto to Toronto as some may think. In the 1980s British producer Paul Elliott began importing British pantos with British casts to Toronto in which Petty was involved. But in 1996 Petty produced the first all-Canadian panto in Toronto incorporating local references and current pop music and featuring all Canadian performers. These holiday “family musicals” became so popular that people who had first seen Petty’s pantos as children would later bring their own children to see them. The tradition Petty created will be irreplaceable.

As a Ross Petty panto about Ross Petty’s pantos, Peter’s Final Flight introduces self-referentiality early on in the action. The show begins ordinarily enough. We have a scene of the servants of the Darling household putting Wendy, John and Michael to bed while their dog Nana curls up to sleep. Peter Pan flies in through the window and wakes up John and Michael but, surprisingly, Wendy misses her cue.

The voice of director Tracey Flye takes over and wakes Wendy, played by Stephanie Sy, who has been so busy with social media that she hasn’t been paying attention. Peter (Alex Wierzbicki) takes Sy to task for spending so much time on her smartphone. It turns out that this is not the only time Sy or Wendy is ridiculed. “Young people, stop spending so much time on your screens! Experience life!” becomes the major lesson of Peter’s Final Flight and it is repeated so often that Ross Petty, via script writer Matt Murray, must be seriously worried about young people who have chosen a virtual life over a real one.

The ever-daffy Plumbum arrives (Dan Chameroy in his tenth appearance as the character) and explains that J.M. Barrie, author of the the original play Peter Pan (1904), modelled Tinkerbell on her. Plumbum is still riled that Barrie didn’t use her name in the book.

Finally, Ross Petty, playing himself, arrives on the scene and is greeted by a torrent of boos. He looks at us as if to ask, “You’re booing me even when I’m not in character?” although he knows very well why. Once he establishes what the problem is, this show-about-the-show, which few children will understand, ends, the voice of the director takes everyone back to Peter’s entrance and the panto continues interrupted again only by humorous advertising videos used to cover scene changes.

In the retake of the panto Wendy wakes up on cue, a strange vortex of cloud forms on the pixel-board that makes up the backdrop and everyone is sucked into Neverland arriving in the midst of the Lost Ones (as opposed to Lost Boys to make things more egalitarian). Once Peter, Wendy and Plumbum go off with the Lost Ones (John and Michael have somehow been forgotten), the real villain of the show makes her entrance.

This is the previous unknown Helga Hook (Sara-Jeanne Hosie), wife of Captain Hook, who is out to avenge her husband’s death for which she holds Peter responsible. Her sidekick is Smee (Eddie Glen in his 20th Petty panto appearance). Helga does capture Peter, Wendy and Plumbum and is about to execute them when Smee, who has a soft spot for the young people, suggests to Helga that a greater revenge would to destroy all of Neverland. Thus, begins the race of the good guys versus the bad guys to find the Heart of Neverland – the former to protect it, the latter to shatter it. Helga has snatched Plumbum’s magic fairy dust and is now invincible.

This is one of Murray’s better plots because there is more urgency to it than usual. Murray has also cleverly constructed the story so that each one of the main characters and the chorus as a whole have the chance to show off their talents with a song. Murray has also added more occasions where the audience directly influences the action.

The cast, composed as it is of Petty’s own troupe of panto favourites, is very strong. Alex Wierzbicki was cast in Petty’s 2020 panto which had to be broadcast online due to Covid, thus leaving Stephanie Sy the only newcomer to the genre. It turns out that triple-threats Wierzbicki and Sy are an excellent Peter and Wendy. Wierzbicki is a very physical actor and exudes an energy that lights up the stage. He shows a talent for imitation when he impersonates Captain Hook so well that at first we think it must be Ross Petty.

Sy bravely takes on the least likeable of the good guys since her character Wendy is so preoccupied with social media, but when she turns off her phone after her trip the Neverland and has learned that real life is more important than virtual life, Sy makes her realization feel like a real triumph. With her strong voice Sy gives a rousing account of “Dear Future Husband” (2015) by Meghan Trainor.

Dan Chameroy’s Plumbum was not the man-hungry character she has been in the past. The show finds her in a more reflective mood, thinking about past failures like encouraging newsreader Lisa LaFlamme to let her hair go grey. For some reason Plumbum seemed to be channelling Catherine O’Hara’s Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek in her delivery, but that did not diminish her charm. Chameroy is so hilarious as Plumbum, we forget he is also well-known as a singer. And this he demonstrated by deliberately holding out high notes as long as possible his account of Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” (1982).

In an heroic move Plumbum defends her friends by interposing her body between them and the weaponized fairy dust that Helga casts at them. This causes the others to be enfeebled but Plumbum dies from the attack. Since Plumbum has told us that she is really Tinkerbell, this would have been a perfect time to ask the audience if they believe in fairies as in Barrie’s play. But in the egalitarian spirit of the show, Peter asks if the children can help them all by clapping. And, of course, they do, thus making children the rescuers of the adults as always should be the case in pantos.

Eddie Glen is again a genial sidekick. The great aspect of his playing this role is that even if his character is somehow obliged to the villain, Glen always shows that the sidekick really supports the good guys and secretly longs for his master’s demise. As always his many improvised asides are one of the main pleasures of the show.

After Ross Petty ceased playing the villain in his Peter Pan of 2015 there were two years where an adequate replacement could not be found. Then along came Sara-Jeanne Hosie in The Wizard of Oz of 2018 and proved that she was the one person in Canada with the right attitude for panto plus the acting and singing ability to step confidently into Ross Petty’s shoes. Hosie is wonderful. She knows exactly how to play a panto villain – a balancing act between saying mean things about the children in the audience and yet making the children aware that she is also just playing a role.

In Peter's Final Flight she, not Petty is the principal villain since Petty is seen only in flashback or as a ghost. It somehow comes about that there is a contest to find out who is more evil by having a booing contest between Hosie as Helga and Petty as Hook. Petty wins, of course, but not by much and Hosie graciously accepts defeat, but secretly I’m sure many people would be happy, if pantos at the Elgin could continue, to see Hosie as the villain for another decade. Not only does she have the pose right and the comic ad libs, but she has a powerful singing voice as she proves in her account of “Greedy” made popular by Ariana Grande in 2016. She sang with such power that the audience couldn’t help applauding even though they knew Hosie was still the villain.

As one might imagine, Ross Petty, both playing himself and Captain Hook, was in a pensive mood. He obviously enjoys dressing up as Hook, his favourite villain and egging on the audience to greater and greater boos. As Hook he sings Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way” (1969), which takes on a meaning not just applicable to Hook but to Petty himself who is responsible for creating a Canadian panto tradition.

Early on in the show Petty playing himself tells Peter, “If you can’t find the magic, look to the children”, and that would seem to be Petty’s own guide in nurturing the panto for so long. Near the end of the show, again as himself, Petty says in all sincerity that “Producing these pantos for the last 25 years has been the greatest adventure of my life”. The audience stood as one and applauded.

All we can say to Petty, his cast and his creative team is “Thank you. Our gratitude for what you have done in unbounded. We will miss you greatly next holiday season. But at least your last show has been one of your very best”.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Ross Petty as Captain Hook; Alex Wierzbicki as Peter, Dan Chameroy as Plumbum as Stephanie Sy as Wendy; Stephanie Sy as Wendy, Alex Wierzbicki as Peter (flying) with the Lost Ones; Sara-Jeanne Hosie as Helga; Ross Petty as himself. © 2022 Racheal McCaig.

For tickets visit www.rosspetty.com.