Peter Pan: The Show with Eternal Youth
Since Peter Pan — played by winsome actress Nina Boucicault — first flew across the London stage on 27th December 1904, J. M. Barrie’s enchanting story of the boy who never grows up has scarcely been out of production. For well over a century it has reappeared as a play, television spectacular, pantomime, book, sequel and prequel, in animated and live-action films and a variety of other adaptations and spin-offs. Producers have thrown — and made — fortunes at the once-risky theatrical proposition. Within a year of its London first night it was running on Broadway, making a star of Maude Adams in the title role; the “Peter Pan” collar being named after the distinctive feature of her costume.
We often invest Edwardian times with a cosy nostalgia, seeing only a gilded era of peace, luxury and privilege. Yet it was also a period of general unrest and great social change as amazing inventions, revolutionary movements in the Arts and relentless political forces signalled the end of a long-established Victorian age. Both the style and the meaning of Peter Pan chimed with this “shock of the new”.
Barrie, born in Scotland in 1860, was already an established and popular dramatist and would go on to be knighted and awarded the Order of Merit, but in 1904 he was known for wittily incisive and realistic social dramas such as Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton. To fill a West End theatre with a fantasy of pirates, mermaids, fairies, flying children and a dog as a nanny was a considerable risk.
If his producers were anxious, Barrie himself was even more alarmed at the prospect of being laughed off with a failure. At the famous moment in the play where Peter pleads for people to clap in order to declare their belief in fairies and so save Tinkerbell’s life, Barrie had instructed the orchestra to clap in case
nobody in the audience responded. He must have been hugely relieved when the first-night audience in the Duke of York Theatre clapped enthusiastically, Tinkerbell was duly saved, and Peter Pan went on to become an undying success.
Ever since those far-off days of a new century, parades of fine actors have lined up to play the principal characters and found the experience enhance their popularity. Major film stars including Veronica Lake, Margaret Lockwood and Hayley Mills donned the tights and flying-wires to great acclaim. Wendy Craig, Anita Harris, Millicent Martin, Toyah Willcox, Lulu, Bonnie Langford and a host of popular actresses and singers would take the spectacle to new audiences …threatened by equally famous performers in the swaggering role of Captain Hook. Boris Karloff, George Cole, David Hasselhoff, Brian Blessed, Leslie Grantham, Henry Winkler and many others have brandished the hook with relish.
There have been certain productions which might be considered remarkable for all kinds of reasons, not least a collaboration of enormous fame and talent. For example, a spectacular but curious television version filmed at Elstree in 1976 starred Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye. Wendy was played as an adult by Jill Gascoine. John Gielgud made a distinguished narrator and Julie Andrews sang on the soundtrack. The 2004 film Finding Neverland had Johnny Depp as a thoughtful J. M. Barrie, with Dustin Hoffman as his nervous impresario, and sought to explore Barrie’s inspiration for the play while telling the extraordinary tale of its first night.
For many people the definitive version has been Walt Disney’s 1953 animation. It might be hard to beat for colour and spectacle, but it is inevitably Americanised and — to myself at least — its Peter has an irritating tinge of the superhero about him. I love the movies and a good live show but, perhaps curiously, my favourite Peter Pan is neither a film nor a play but a book, magnificently illustrated by one of my favourite 20th-century artists Anne Grahame Johnstone. In her finely detailed and richly coloured pictures, lit with a magical glow to ravish the senses, Peter and Wendy are realised as children of exquisite beauty; and surely a more elegant, dandified and wonderfully conceited Captain Hook never strode the stage. The total effect is dreamlike, romantic and enchanting and this is how I like to imagine the characters.
Whatever might be done in print or production, the essential magic of the story seems impregnable. It is full of fun and adventure and its theme of escape to a magical dimension has universal appeal. Under critical scrutiny, the story can be read on various levels. If it is a sentimental fantasy it is also a glorious affirmation of innocence and life; a bid to triumph over death. Barrie acknowledged the terrible truth that all children “die” simply by growing up; his character of Peter would defy that and enable us all to travel by powers of imagination to a place where death and time would be defeated. Thus there is a darker side to Peter Pan which might be unsettling beyond the enjoyable pantomime scariness of Captain Hook and that business with the crocodile — but that is as it should be, for there is a darker side to Barrie’s own life and the tangled relationships of his family and friends.
Barrie developed the story through memories of his own childhood. There had been pirate games played with his brothers; later, when his mother’s favourite son was killed in a skating accident, she would comfort herself by saying the dead boy would now never grow up and leave her.
The greatest influences came through Barrie’s perhaps remarkable friendship with the Llewelyn Davies family he had met while walking his St. Bernard dog in Kensington Gardens. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, daughter of the writer George du Maurier, was mother to five sons; Barrie quickly became their fatherfigure, despite the fact that he and Sylvia were in different marriages. He amused the two elder boys George and Jack with inventive stories in which their younger brother Peter could fly. The relationships between Barrie and this family and his other literary and artistic associates is itself fascinating. It has been the subject of books and an acclaimed BBC television drama The Lost Boys starring Sir Ian Holm as Barrie.
If Peter never grows up, other children can, thanks to Barrie’s generosity. He gave the rights from Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929 and to this day the famous children’s hospital benefits from a percentage of royalties from every production and book sale.
Times change, but Peter still never grows up and nothing tarnishes the wonder of Barrie’s creation. To yearn for a Neverland — a place of escape from constricting rules and oppressive domesticity into endless possibilities where happiness and fantasy never die — remains a human compulsion. Barrie’s message that to find fulfilment we should embark on a quest for innocence holds good down the ages. So let’s all set our imaginations free and head for that “second star on the right, straight on ’til morning.”