A Pan that deserves a panning

J.M. BARRIE’S Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, is re-invented as a sullen middle-aged man in a performance with nothing to say about childhood and everything to say about ‘kidulthood’.

Four years ago in Bristol, Sally Cookson’s production struck me as a benign attempt to be imaginative with an over-familiar story. Now, the fun and games have been alloyed with Gothic expressionism, death threats and an execution (not Hook’s).

Worst of all, the two-andthree-quarter-hour show seeks to psychoanalyse its heroes. As Peter, Paul Hilton (right) pretends to be a child, but looks like a Dickensian undertaker exploring Peter’s unconscious rage at his absent mother.

This may be buried in Barrie’s story, but that’s how it should stay. Instead, they’re all at it — including Anna Francolini’s Captain Hook, who is an evil, tortured mother crying: ‘I am battered, I am blood, I am brutality!’ Depth? In Peter Pan? No thanks. Madeleine Worrall is supposed

Peter Pan (Olivier, Royal National) Verdict: Too grown-up

to redeem these two dysfunctional characters with a wholesome, mumsy Wendy. But children want someone to take them on a swashbuckling lark. They don’t want adults muscling in. The staging is daring, and the show is engaging when it is panto-like. One big moment is when Hook’s ship — a giant skip with a street lamp for a mast — rises to the vast Olivier stage. But between bearded children and a war-torn set that looks like downtown Aleppo, this is a production that’s trying too hard. It left me craving a time when Peter Pan was played as a guileless innocent. Instead of trying to say something interesting about adults not growing up, they should simply get out of the children’s way.