This is amazingly fun theater. It is creative and celebrates imagination in so many ways, appealing to all ages and is a play in the best, most playful, sense of the word. The story is a prequel to Peter Pan with an absurdly hilarious cast of misfits sailing the high seas using spartan props to create elaborate scenes with Gondry-style guerrilla effects. The wordplay is fast and clever, slipping in something for everyone, young or old or high or low. Nobody is excluded in this world.
I love working with kids because they are so creative and always flowing with new ideas. Anything can be fun when playing is what you do best. I wish I could remember what it truly felt like to be that age; it comes in flashes as specific memories, but the essence of being a child remains a beautiful mystery.
New York Theatre Workshop: www.nytw.org
The problem with this series is that Peter Pan already HAS a backstory as per his creator, J.M. Barrie. The Barry/Pearson novels have a TON of mistakes in them, so many that one has to wonder if they even bothered to READ Barrie. It’s not just fact-checking. They change personalities as well as the very reason Pan doesn’t grow up! How can they be so disrespectful to classic literature let alone another author? List of Differences
There is a faithful continuation of Pan’s adventures, based on Barrie’s own idea for more:
Click!
And a great ‘What if?’ story (but it’s not for the kids!): Click!
BELIEVE!
Thanks for your comment. That’s interesting and I respect that the original story means so much to you, but knowing this does not affect how I feel about the show. I find inspired creativity more interesting than faithful accuracy and believe that all art is an evolution from its predecessors.