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Show: Peter Pan
Society: Rose Theatre Kingston (professional)
Venue: Rose Theatre, 24-26 High Street, Kingston upon Thames , Surrey KT1 1HL
Credits: Evan Placey after JM Barrie. Music, lyrics and orchestrations by Vikki Stone. Musical Director: Bradley Charles Directed by lucy Morrell. A Rose Original Production.
Type: Sardines
Author: Susan Elkin
Performance Date: 03/12/2023
Peter Pan
Susan Elkin | 11 Dec 2023 01:48am
Photo by Mark Douet
Peter Pan is a very strange story, redolent with ambiguous subtext. That is why it has been interpreted in so many imaginative ways over the years and why, incidentally, it doesn’t work very well as a pantomime.
With Evan Placey in the writer’s chair it was bound to become a humane, thoughtful show for today. The emphasis is firmly on forming loving families — which can take any shape — with a lot of insights into motherhood which is potentially stressful, because children aren’t always cooperative or partners helpful. And Tiger Lily, originally a fantasy “Red Indian”, becomes a lonely figure struggling discreetly with otherness.
The show uses four adult professionals and a magnificent cast of twenty young performers from Rose Youth Theatre. These work in two teams and I saw the Green Cast on press night.
The music is pre-recorded rather than live but the cast seem to work happily with it. It’s a show with occasional songs rather than full blown musical theatre. The slinkily rhythmic melody for the pirates is especially effective.
The show is framed by a lively grandmother (Hilary McClean, good), probably 1960s, trying to coax her grandson Ralph (Ella Waldmann, Green Cast) to bed in an old fashioned nursery. She ends up telling Ralph a bedtime story thus becoming a quasi narrator. At the end of the show we learn why she knows the story so well and history – sort of – repeats itself.
Michelle Bishop is outstanding as fraught Mrs Darling, trying to deal with an insolent daughter, a pretty useless husband (Dominic Rye) and comforted only by Nana the dog who’s a rather gorgeous life-sized puppet.
Bishop then becomes one of the best Captain Hooks I’ve ever seen. As Jane Hook she is ugly, angry, snarling and using wonderfully distorted vowel sounds, lingering on growling, raucous glottal stops. The only chink in her ruthlessness is her love for her dog, who is of course Nana, and that’s an interestingly original linking idea. Bishop commands the stage when she sings too.
Isla Griffiths (Green cast) is so strong as Wendy – rude to her mother, trying to manage the lost boys and then dealing with an adolescent yearning for Peter – that I initially took her for one of the four core adults. I suspect she has a successful professional career ahead of her, if she wants it.
Matthew Rye is good value as silly Mr Darling and as his alter-ego Smee, I shall long treasure the moment with the dog and the poo bag which is lovely comedy. He’s fun in Nana’s Kennel at the end too.
Kaine Ruddach’s Peter is naturalistic, convincing and faintly sad. In this version the Lost Boys didn’t fall out of their prams; they were born to people who couldn’t look after them and the happy ending is a lump-in-the-throat moment although, of course, Peter stays in Neverland. There is – as I always point out to students – only one way to stay young for ever. Ask Mozart, Keats or Diana, Princess of Wales. And of course Placey gives us Barrie’s most famous line, at the end of Act 1 to support that point for anyone who wants to reflect on it.
There are some fine theatrical moments in this show. The ensemble is beautifully directed. Each of the pirates has a distinct persona and I’ve rarely seen the personalisities of the Lost Boys – especially Tootles (Luke Groarke, Green cast) so clearly delineated. And it sits well on Oli Townsend’s split level set with stairs either side leading to a balcony. There is no actual flying but the way round it is clever – lots of arm flapping and ballet lifts followed by a charming sequence with illuminated stick puppets.
It is, however, the observations that Placey gives some of these characters which will stay with me: “Families are not fair. Families are not a democracy” and “Family doesn’t mean where you come from. It means where you are now”. Yes, definitely, a show with an agenda but it’s not “worthy”. It’s fun.