Peter Pan buzzes Riverside

Margaret Lawrence
Published: November 13, 2008

He’s the boy with everything: a novel, a play, a movie, a musical, even a peanut butter. Women impersonate him, but his very name invokes a male psychological malady — or a modern pop star with his own bizarre Neverland. The story of his birth is even stranger than he is, but Peter Pan today appears to modern audiences in the form most people know best — the charming, eternal boy child who refuses to grow up, can’t be touched and reappears to beguile generation after generation.

Riverside’s newly opened musical, which adheres to the Jerome Robbins staging, falls solidly in the Disney camp. Threats are “just pretend” with a touch of the comic. Even Captain Hook, that dastardly one-handed pirate of panache, enters lounging, borne on a litter by his ragtag crew of motherless men. Stephen Hayes, who plays both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook (surely one of his best castings), directs with an eye for both broad audience appeal and crisp pacing. One or two moments became bogged down in the behind-the-scrim set changes, but otherwise moved decisively from scene to scene.

The first true magic is the casting of Justin Scott as Peter Pan himself. There’s a reason why women traditionally play this role. It requires someone slender, able to play young and sing high. Boys who can sing high are generally too young to carry such a weighty role, but Mr. Scott combines the presence of his actual years with the appearance and voice of a much younger character. Add to that a hint of arrested masculinity and his scenes with Wendy take on a subtly different dimension. Add to that a sweet boyish tenor and a natural stage charm and distant memories of Mary Martin go flying out the window.

The Darling children meet all expectations. Wendy (Bethany Finnegan), the self-possessed older sister and honorary mother to a passel of boys, is gifted with a crystal soprano. Her duet with Peter, “Distant Memory” is an exquisite arrangement that calls on the best of both voices. John (Cooper Shaw) and Michael (Jacob Daiger) join with the Lost Boys singing “Wendy” led by Peter, and rapidly learn the ground rules as presented in the child anthem “I Won’t Grow Up.”

Most of the cast are, in fact, children. The Lost Boys are balanced by eight Indian girls led by Tiger Lily (Sally Roehl). Fifty years have taken their toll on our sensibilities, and audiences will simply have to relax and smile for such cartoon Indian burlesques as “Ugg-A-Wug” and “Ugg-A-Wug Pirates.” Dances and routines choreographed by Billy Smith strike a balance between accessible and playfully energetic. Tinkerbell, the faithful fairy, is played by a red laser pointer and a very purposeful sounding bell.

And then there are the adults. Hook, marvelously stylish as well as fiendish, rules a bumbling crew of misfits, each one as colorful as the Sunday comics and each one eager to please and easily bamboozled. This, of course, is why the resourceful Pan is able to command the crew to free Tiger Lily thus guaranteeing her loyalty and Hook’s wrath. Hook lives to undo Peter Pan and Peter Pan gets his daily frolic by driving Hook around the bend. Their most entertaining confrontation occurs in “Mysterious Lady” when Peter, draped in a green veil, is mistaken for a beguiling female and Hook, readily beguiled, attempts to chase down and win the “enchantress.”

Indigenous to Neverland is a host of fuzzy animals who observe the comings and goings, trot about good naturedly, but otherwise have little purpose beyond providing a mildly diverting levity. And here the crocodile distinguishes himself, for his snapping jaws and lizard-like crawl across the stage suggest a very particular purpose indeed.

You can’t have “Peter Pan” without flying, and Riverside has procured the services of ZFX, Inc. to take care of this problem. The flight work of Peter and the children is handled with minimal distractions of harness and wire; movement is light, and even the singing while flying is performed gracefully. The interlude of a flying Liza (Brittnie Worley) with the creatures in the “Neverland Waltz,” however, doesn’t adequately define the dream state of Peter Pan as intended. A simple re-design of lighting may be all that’s needed to clarify its purpose.

Gateway Playhouse provided the scenery with mixed — though overall positive — results. The front scrim consists of a delicately framed open oval through which the Edwardian-era family can be glimpsed like an old fashioned portrait. The children’s nursery, a delight of innocent color and detail, includes wall stencil silhouettes of pirate ship, palm trees, and island, but here also is my main disappointment. The tall windows through which Peter appears and the children fly away is backed by a wall of flat, featureless blue. If ever a design cried out for a black, star-studded sky and the chimney tops of old London, this is it. Other contrivances - the island tree house and the pirate ship, are more successful.

On the surface a children’s tale, “Peter Pan” enters the adult consciousness obliquely. The need of children to return to the path of normal life inevitably leading to adulthood (and farther from Neverland) suggests a poignant conflict. When Peter returns to entice the children of the Lost Children away with him, it isn’t clear who is being left behind - the adults who can’t possibly return to that idealized myth of childhood or the boy who refuses to leave it.

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama and English at CCHS.

Want go go?
What: “Peter Pan”
Where: Riverside Dinner Theatre, Fredericksburg
Call: (540) 370-4300
or visit riversidedinnertheatre.org
Playing through January