Uneasy exploration of the dark side of Neverland

Peter Pan

King’s Theatre, Glasgow

As is abundantly and intriguingly clear from this new National Theatre of Scotland production, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a character rife with contradictions. He’s the hero of a much-loved, seemingly ultra-cosy fairytale, who lives beyond all social bounds and seeks to inveigle three children away from their parents forever. He claims to be incapable of real feeling, but undergoes extreme danger to rescue
his friends, and equal anguish when he thinks Tinkerbell’s dead. He denies remembering anything beyond the immediate past, but goes on visiting Wendy long after she’s absorbed by adulthood. He’s adamant
that he’ll never grow up, yet ultimately he represents death: if we followed his example, there’d soon be no more generations of children to be enthralled by his story.

David Greig’s adaptation of Barrie’s play, under the much-garlanded direction of John (Black Watch) Tiffany, seeks centrally to resolve its overriding contradiction, between the main Neverland narrative’s many dark, uneasy aspects and the aforementioned ultra-cosiness with which it’s glossed, both in the original and in most subsequent treatments of the tale, from Disney to panto. The new version deploys the Gordian tactic of transplanting the Darling household from Edwardian Kensington to Victorian Edinburgh, a switch underscored by the looming presence of a half-built Forth Rail Bridge – the cleverly foreshortened centrepiece of Laura Hopkins’s design, which later doubles for the Jolly Roger and Marooners Rock – and by the conflation of the Lost Boys with child labourers in the construction crew. In so doing, however, and in characterising Peter himself as an untamed,
adolescent, volatile and authentically fey free spirit – compellingly realised by RSAMD second-year Kevin Guthrie – rather than any
perpetual innocent, Greig and Tiffany don’t entirely cut through the knot, as their approach’s murkier psychic and mythic resonances still sit somewhat uneasily with the twin aim of laying on a big extravagant family adventure.

While clear, unfussy and at ease in its Scots idioms, Greig’s script has its share of stilted moments, and the pacing of the show overall
is markedly uneven, with the action scenes interspersed by rather too many largely static interludes. The physical and technical demands on the principal players, from The Matrix-style Chinese circus ‘flying’ methods, using bungee ropes and counterbalances, to several big ensemble fight sequences, staged on Hopkins’s multi-level bridge/pirate-ship framework, have been well-documented, and these elements on press night still seemed something of a work in progress, despite the lengthy rehearsal period involved. For each stunning aerial manoeuvre and gravity-defying set-piece, there were moments where the performers seemed less than wholly confident in, even hampered by, their harnesses and cumbersome elastic umbilici, and those battles at times looked as scrappy as they did swashbuckling.

There were also some distractingly bizarre decisions regarding relatively minor stage business – such as that to represent the
Darlings’ family dog, Nana, with a life-size stuffed toy, wheeled around and vocalised by two actors together, both in maids’ uniforms.
Or to cast young adult actors as the Darling children – and then to have them all awkwardly cramming into one bed for the nursery scenes.

With Guthrie’s charismatic, capricious vitality as Peter securely balanced by Kirsty Mackay’s Wendy, however (a decidedly bolshier, more tomboyish mother to the Lost Boys than is traditional), this central relationship forms a sufficiently strong emotional anchor for the piece, enabling its deeper significance – at the level of masculine/feminine archetypes, for instance, or of the life-force
versus the death-wish – to emerge with steadily greater force as the story progresses. Musical director Davey Anderson’s extensive use of traditional ballads, lullabies and sea shanties within his score adds
considerably to the earthier atmosphere and linguistic textures of the Scottish setting, and Cal MacAninch certainly makes a creepily
menacing Captain Hook, even if a touch more panto in his portrayal wouldn’t have gone amiss – along with a touch more boisterous humour in general – in keeping the younger audience members fully engaged. The depiction of Tinkerbell, meanwhile, as a kind of fiery will-o’-the-wisp, was a true touch of magic – try as I might, I could not see how it was done – and the show as a whole will undoubtedly cast a more potent spell once it settles in.

Until 8 May, then touring until June 19

www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_PeterPan

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