ARE PAN’S STRUGGLES LOST IN TRANSLATION?
Everyone’s trying a little TOO hard as Roddy Doyle shifts Neverland to Dublin
‘Speak with the same loaded Dublin accent and enunciate at top volume’
Peter Pan Gate Theatre Until Jan 14 ★★★☆☆
There’s no definitive version of Peter Pan, as a character or as a play. JM Barrie’s story about the joys of childhood, and the pain of leaving it, has had multiple interpretations on film, on stage, as a Broadway musical and in a raft of television productions during its 120-year existence.
In the process it has lost the original Redskins who don’t fit in with modern thinking, but the underlying story is usually the same. The boy who wouldn’t grow up rescues the Lost Boys who fell out of their prams and brings them to Neverland, encounters the wicked Captain Hook and his pirate gang, while a crocodile with a taste for human flesh and an alarm clock in its belly stalks Hook, having eaten his hand that was chopped off by Peter Pan.
The play, an exciting fantasy, can also seem like a desperate attempt to envisage an extended childhood, stretching into a perpetual state of freedom from rules, fear, and adult responsibilities.
Peter will engage with other children but strictly forbids them to touch him.
And as a result the play can be a goldmine for psychological speculation about Barrie and his approach to life, as well as being great fun for children to enjoy the bravado of this self-centred boy facing difficulties without fear, always ready to take the credit when things work out well.
And most of the original story in this new Roddy Doyle version is set in Edwardian Dublin.
The most obvious and immediate effect of the resetting is that everybody speaks with the same loaded Dublin accent and they all enunciate at top volume, making everyone seem a bit too similar, including all the members of the Darling family. There’s an impression of everyone straining too hard with physical activity to be funny, upsetting the delicate balance between the humour and the very poignant aspects of Peter’s attempts to remain a child forever, that leaves him incapable of responding to Wendy’s affections.
And having Nana, the nurserymaid dog, played by a man in an over-sized dog outfit dragged out the opening rather clumsily.
Staging the flight of the Darling family and Peter to Neverland is difficult, but the use of lighting and sound effects works quite well. There’s occasional elaborate choreography but no modern digital high jinks, and some effects like the crocodile’s disposing of Captain Hook are done on a darkened stage which is a bit of a cheat.
Having the fairy Tinker Bell as a chirpy electronic puppet manipulated by grown-ups, limits the role and underplays her aggressive jealousy towards Wendy, but it keeps the fairy idea alive, although Peter’s appeal to the audience to spare Tink’s life is too much of a panto act.
Liam Bixby is an engaging Peter, and Caitríona Williams gives a fine performance as the frustrated Wendy, mother to everyone, but unable to break through Peter’s mental restrictions. Shane O’Reilly was a good contrasting double act as Mr Darling and Smee, and Clare Dunne was a suitably loving Mrs Darling and a bombastic Captain Hook.