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Peter Pan (review)
| Source: |
Stage and Page |
| Date: |
November 2007 |
| Author: |
Keith Garebian |
Peter Pan
by Chris Earle
Directed by Susan H. Schulman
A Ross Petty Production
at the Elgin Theatre
November 22-January 6, 2007
A Ross Petty pantomime is really a question of joyous misrule, with a
glorious emphasis on parody, vaudeville, and cartoon fantasy as it
fractures a fairy tale for the little ones. Anything is game and
gamely played for mirth and jollity—and if many of the jokes happen to
fly over the heads of youngsters, it’s because Petty knows that
adults need to be entertained as well. The latest celebration is a
whiz-bang updating of James M. Barrie’s classic story of the boy who
never grew up, and though there isn’t really much faery (especially
as former ice-skating champ Kurt Browning is the first balding Pan
ever to don asparagus green) and the original story is sometimes lost
in the antic merriment that writer Chris Earle and director Susan
H. Schulman have devised, it is largely a happy adventure. Visually,
this is one of the best family musicals ever from Ross Petty
Productions, with very fine painted décor of city, lagoon, and forest,
and with some beautifully exotic costumes by Erika Connor. Though
Steve Ross’ lighting cannot disguise the flying harnesses and lines,
there is atmosphere aplenty, and the libretto ensures that laughter
will resound in decibels.
Of course, this isn’t Barrie’s classic fable brought to life, but
it’s a lively fable that may become a theatre classic on its
own—provided, of course, you forget about the traditional norms of
English panto and don’t mind the script’s radical tinkering with
the Barrie classic or the potpourri of musical and dance
styles. There’s no customary Panto Dame, but there is a drag act
that is hilarious. Earle’s version is cleverly contemporary, with
Mr. Darling (Petty in his pre-Hook mode) converted into a man with
a mid-life crisis, helped along by a chic girlfriend (Diana
Coatsworth) who is every bit a material woman, and three children
who are the 21st century’s version of their English
originals. Wendy (Megan Hoople) is a pouty, flighty teenager who
protests that her life is being ruined by dear old Dad who, she
claims, is stifling her greatness as an artist. She means she wants
to be a singing star on the order of a Christina Aguilera or an
Avril Lavigne. Her brothers, too, get the post-nuclear family
treatment: Michael (Brandon Banks) is bookish but asthmatic (he
uses his puffer at times), while John (Matthew Del Bel Belluz) is a
game-boy, very au courant with computers. Mr. Darling would give
his right arm to get things back to normal as he asserts his
authority to be captain of the ship. Yes, I know it’s arch
dialogue, but it’s also fun, and not a flat joke—unlike some of
the truly bad puns that usually litter a parody. The best thing
about this family may be the pet dog, Nana, whose doghouse was
purportedly bought off a beagle obsessed with World War I. You will
need to be smarter than a third-grader to get this one. The best
thing about Nana is that the role is played by Eddie Glen, who is a
driving force in the production, especially when he turns into
Smee.
He is comedy rampant, which may be a very good thing because Petty’s
Hook is somewhat tamer than one would have wished for, though quite
amusing in its own clownish, way, with emphasis on narcissism and
villainy.
Parody, of course, is the fuel for this comic fantasy. Pan’s
shadow turns out to be a brown Ninja (Wilson Wong), a nimble, comic
delight. Tinkerbell (Jennifer Waiser) is a bit of a waste as a
jealous rival of Wendy, but Neverland has direct correlations to
reality television and current events to compensate for the
diminution of fairy tale whimsy. The Lost Boys are aging relics of
a lost generation. One (Steven Gallagher) is an eccentric drawler,
another (Geoffrey Tyler) a Hispanic head chef, and the third (Larry
Mannell) an overgrown campfire sing-along leader. Only the drawler
is funny in a sort of pothead way. The mermaids are trans-aquatic
Dixie Fish (“Shut up and Swim!”), while Tiger Lily (Kiri Etzkorn)
and her Indians have been become Southeast Asians with fantastic
business instincts and equally fantastic musical choreography
(brainchild of Tracey Flye), and the absolute dance highlight of
the first act is a risible Bollywood number that even Bollywood
couldn’t top. Well, I wish to modify this claim: there is a
wonderful male corps of dancers, but the single best dancing is
easily by Donnie MacPhee, whose breakdancing, hip-hop Crocodile is
the most awesomely and dangerously rhythmic one ever to appear in
any version of Peter Pan.
If I wanted to be a spoiler, I could itemize all the
delights—including a version of American Idol and Are You Smarter
Than A Fifth Grader?—and that would take away some of the
surprises, but I do want to go on record as saying that Kurt
Browning, while stiff in his acting, has simple charm when it
counts, and he sure can move like no other Pan before him—with or
without skates. If only he had worn a cap or wig to create some
illusion of a boy with whom kids could more easily identify!
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