Royal
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Five
stars
There
is an emotional ache at the heart of Ella Hickson’s reimagining of J.M. Barrie’s
much-loved children’s story, brought to vivid life by director Eleanor Rhode on
Max Johns’ expansive set that opens out from children’s bedroom to lost boys’
hideout and pirate’s lair. It’s an ache of wonder and loss that treads the
shadow-line between the two in a world where growing up isn’t always easy.
None
of the play’s over-riding seriousness takes away from the transformative sense
of joy that runs through a show that makes Isobel McArthur’s Wendy much more
than Peter Pan’s sidekick once she and her brothers fly off to Never Land where
she’s meant to play mum. As she learns from her sisters-in-arms Tink and Tiger
Lily how to hang tough, Wendy also comes to terms with the death of her brother
Tom, whose presence gives the show added depths.
This
is seen through the transformation of the family home as a house of laughter to
one of pain. It’s there too when Sally Reid’s fairy-winged force of nature Tink
appears to have breathed her last. When Bonnie Baddoo’s fearless Tiger Lily is
killed without comment, both incidents are as poignant as any Shakespearian
youth who becomes the first of the gang to die.
Ziggy
Heath’s Peter is a terminal adolescent and unreconstructed thrill-seeker with
no sense of everyday responsibilities who gets by on charisma alone. As he
spars with Captain Hook, played by Gyuri Sarossy as an increasingly past-it
punk, it’s as if he’s squaring up to his own delayed mortality.
Hickson
not only empowers Wendy, but allows her younger brother Michael to take a leap
into the dressing up box to explore his own sense of self. Underscored by
Michael John McCarthy’s moving score and given a starry beauty by Mark
Doubleday’s lighting, the result is an exquisite fantasia about healing, about growing
up enough to keep the child within alive, and about learning to let go enough to
be able to fly in every way.
The Herald, December 3rd 2018
ends
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