>>REVIEW
PETER PAN
Runs until December 27
Alberta Theatre Projects
Martha Cohen Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Two years ago, Alberta Theatre Projects’ holiday play brought the best kind of enchantment to its stage. It was a magic trick that dazzled, even with the magician’s sleeves hanging wide open. But while its co-production with The Old Trout Puppet Workshop was an achingly beautiful adaptation of Pinocchio with the Trouts in full view and the very gears of the production exposed, this year’s puppetless Peter Pan lacks the flash to dazzle and the charm to suspend our disbelief.
Based on the classic children’s story by J.M. Barrie, Jeffrey Pitcher’s adaptation is the story of a girl named Wendy Darling (Arielle Rombough) who wants to become a woman, and a boy, Peter Pan (Braden Griffiths), who doesn’t want to grow up. After discovering Peter in the Darling children’s bedroom listening to Mrs. Darling’s (Kira Bradley) bedtime stories, Wendy helps the ageless child sew back on his shadow. Not being the kind to pass up a woman with domestic skills, Peter invites Wendy and her brothers, John (Evan Rothery) and Michael (Andrew Oberhofer), to live with him in Neverland.
From here, audience members hoping to see the magic of Neverland may find themselves disappointed as the Darling children, the Lost Boys (Rick Duthie, Karl Sine and Guillermo Urra) and Peter Pan play out a dysfunctional domestic situation for an entire scene. True, family dynamics go wrong after Wendy is accidentally shot by a Lost Boy and the children hide from Neverland’s pirates, but neither of these events involves much more than vigorous crouching. Then it’s onto Captain Hook’s (Trevor Leigh) pirate ship for some very "wooden" swordplay and back to bed.
In Pitcher’s script, tepid adventure segues into occasional mommy-girlfriend-Oedipus-fun Freudian psychodrama. If, for instance, the intention of the play’s final moments was to convince us that Peter Pan is a perpetually youthful creepy uncle with a penchant for annual child abductions, the play’s conclusion is a masterstroke. If, on the other hand, Peter’s promise to return every year to spend a week with the youngest Darling girl is intended to be fantastic, rather than an invitation to domestic servitude in Peter’s subterranean Neverland shack, I am simply confused.
All this might be forgiven if the world of Neverland and the magic that allows its characters to fly were vividly rendered in the play’s production. Unfortunately, though last year’s Treasure Island proved that a lot can still happen in a minimalist staging and Pinocchio exposed a unique beauty in the play’s visible workings, Peter Pan’s minimal set is inadequate and its exposed crew is jarring.
The production’s soundscape, composed by Kevin McGugan, sounds like a late ’90s .midi file with flourishing digital instrumentation. The music’s bland "adventure" theme is an unfortunate complement to Scott Reid’s painted Neverland set, whose red and green arches look like they belong in the background of high school prom pictures. The production’s most effective set hearkens back to Reid’s design in last year’s Treasure Island, when the action moves to Hook’s ship with a few set pieces transforming the Martha Cohen stage.
Unfortunately, where the energy of ATP’s previous holiday play offered its fair share of thrills, Peter Pan’s lethargy gives the audience little reason to impose their imagination on its minimal set. By the time the crew wheels out the production’s long, black flight harnesses, the harnesses and crew are as interesting as anything else.
If the production’s magic is fumbled like a card trick gone wrong, it’s heartening at least to see that Peter Pan has silliness in spades. Leigh’s Hook utterly steals the show, every inch the foppish pirate in a dizzying series of lacy layers courtesy of costume designer Deneen Arthur. Similarly, Bradley is at her best as the obsequious Smee, even hoofing out a ridiculous jig that was certainly one of the play’s most amusing moments. And, just as the old maxim about dogs and children says they will, Laryssa Yanchak’s full-body dog costume steals every scene it waddles into.
Pitcher’s Peter Pan is a story about maturity and the reconciliation of the adult and child in everyone. Flight, fights and pirates are all secondary objectives, with Neverland little more than a clubhouse for playing "family." Though taken even farther, the idea of Barrie’s man-child as a pathological case might be an interestingly dark postmodern parable, but the current version seems to be an unwieldy compromise between the adult themes and child-like wonder. ATP’s production is sometimes silly enough to amuse, but it’s no more magical than empty sleeves. |
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