Growing Up With Peter Pan
Growing up and growing old, Peter Pan’s band rejects it all — until they question what they’re missing. Best for families helmed by Pan-fan adults, this Broadway tour aims for broad appeal, with mixed results. It performs in Seattle at the Paramount Theatre through 8/25, and heads to Portland right after (through 9/1).
What does it mean to grow up?
To Peter Pan, in this updated musical, it means having to wear ties and the end of all adventure. To me, it’s a sense of freedom for the individual, the ability to choose whatever you want, with occasional responsibilities. Growing up, then, is aspirational — something to pursue and perhaps never reach — rather than a dead-end.
Who says growing up can’t be fun?
It was a fitting time to have that reckoning: heading to Peter Pan while celebrating a milestone birthday; capping off a day of balancing responsibilities and blissful indulgence. How better to consider the real-life growing up than with a show about refusing adamantly to do so?
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The current Peter Pan is an update to the Jerome Robbins musical (with some book rewrites by Genius Award-winning playwright Larissa FastHorse, whose Thanksgiving Play is definitely a genius sizzler; see NWT’s review here), that’s in turn based on the iconic character and book by J. M. Barrie. None of the plot points or characters came as a surprise for this classic.
What was surprising was to see a staging helmed by an accomplished Broadway director (Lonny Price) turn up so … messy. Messy isn’t always bad, exactly (I myself am an avowed hott mess). But it does mean that if there was a cohesive artistic vision for this staging, I have no idea what it is.
I imagine the directorial team having conversations that went like this:
What if Captain Hook were carried around like royalty of yore and oblivious in his portable cabana while sipping a tiki pineapple drink?
Yes, and! … What if we made him look like Dee Snider, but prancing?
Yes, and! … What if we gave him a bad Scottish accent?
Yes, and! … What if another of his crew had a bad Russian accent, or maybe Italian we’re not really sure, and we made it like a lazy gag where accents are inherently funny?
Yes, and! … What if Snee’s accent is just Big Gay Al?
Yes, and … Yes! Yes! Yes!
It’s confusing, to say the least. What results is a showcase that’s more low-investment comedy than stakes; where themes of good and evil, reality vs. longevity, life and death, are all just a big stew to do with as you want. And I guess that’s the point: it’s designed to appeal to a wide audience — nostalgic adults, their young kids, and the grandparents they roped in, too — without giving anyone nightmares. (Except for the moon, which may well be terrifying. It looks like a combination of that awful baby sun in Teletubbies and some of the weirder live-action talking objects from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Somehow, the moon’s particular blend of mess delighted me.)
How does this updated storybook staging work out? As in any children’s tale, visuals are key, and it delivers on a lot of those points.
With Anna Louizos’ scenic design, the forest setting, where much of the key action takes place, is certainly the strongest. The vivid green absinthe wash (lighting by Amith Chandrashaker) feels like magic and fairy dust. The rainbow cake color wash is full of youth. The beautiful jewel tones with nightfall are mysterious but hold promise. And the design is full of function as well as nice on the eyes, hopping between inside and outside in a unique and suitably storybook way.
But other settings underwhelm, beginning with the Darling children’s bedroom. Its palatial scale and airiness, paired with its uninspiring adornments, leave us wondering what we were dealing with here. Who are these parents? Who are these kids? That doctor career that Wendy keeps talking about — is that a stretch goal for this family, or a birthright in a long line of doctors? And while the costume designs (by Sarafina Bush) for the other characters mostly jell well, not so for the family’s. Why are the boys in modern (albeit cheap) pajamas, while Wendy is stuck in a nightgown straight out of Little House on the Prairie? What era are we in? Why is Mrs. Darling in formal attire for the dad’s work function, which he’s stressed out about, while he’s buttoned up like a fast food manager and can’t fix his tie?
The result is we just don’t get where this family’s at and what makes them tick — and that means going along for the ride by filling in what we know about the Peter Pan story, leaving this specific family irrelevant. That’s not a recipe for emotional lock-in.
The cool visuals quickly take the reins, with Tinkerbell’s light full of sass and charm (a lot to pack in a little speck of spotlight) and Peter Pan’s grand appearance tumbling in through the window.
As Pan, 17-year-old Nolan Almeida has some impressive acrobatics, but as a musical lead he also has a lot on his shoulders. On opening night, at least, he seemed consistently breathy, as if struggling to catch his breath in both the musical numbers and the spoken lines, though his notes delivered were consistently good ones. But all in all, Pan’s band and the Darling children are an impressive cohort of young actors who are likely to only get better as they, ahem, grow up.
Back out of the house and into Neverland, their flight features some cool acrobatics and projections that mimic a whole roller coaster ride through the universe. But the clearly visible suspension lines (these things were obvious-obvious) do kill much of the magic. Better choices in projection colors and lighting for that ride would probably soften those wires immensely.
Through space and the forest and some impressive sword-fighting and all, it builds up to the all-important pirate ship scene — which, unfortunately, thuds. In appearance, a combination of a carnival ride and a greeting card painting, stripped of its menace, with plank-walking plummets designated by a tacky pixelated-looking splash. It may be carefully crafted to not scare the little ones, and I appreciate that. But it leaves us, along with the pirates, adrift.
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Bottom line? For theatre fans, as a piece of musical theatre, this one can be missed. For people who are really into Peter Pan, it’s a winning night out. You’ll either enjoy it for some cool effects and fealty to the tale, or you’ll have a passionate enough hot take on it to get your time and money’s worth.
But for multi-generational households, or theatre fans trying to get their youngsters into something that’s on stage instead of on screen, it’s the sweet spot. Younger kids will appreciate the aerials, the effects, and the easy-to-follow story; any scary bits have been pretty much neutralized in this version (no scorpions in a box here; and the crocodile is delightfully goofy), although the word “ass” was lobbed in there a few times, as a soggy and unimaginative insult, for no apparent reason; and the sword-fighting, music, and some cool visuals will be good enough for the older kids and adults (“grown-up” or not).
And all can enjoy the important moral of the story: that it’s OK to bring random kids home through the window and expect your parents will take care of them. Kids, be sure to try this with puppies, too.
Peter Pan runs through 8/25 at the Paramount Theatre, in Downtown Seattle. Tickets here. Accessibility notes: main restrooms downstairs and upstairs are gendered and multi-stall, with gender-neutral, single-stall restroom on the main floor. Theatre and some common areas are wheelchair accessible. ASL-interpreted and audio described performance at 8/25 matinee; open-captioned performance 8/25 evening.
Run time: 2 hours 15 minutes, with intermission.
Chase D. Anderson is Editor & Producer of NWTheatre.org.