What’s to be gained by reframing JM Barrie’s classic story – relocating the setting from the nursery of the Darling family home beside Kensington Gardens to a field hospital by the trenches of the Somme during the first world war? As it turns out, quite a lot – and that without sacrificing one jot of its universal appeal. Eve, my early stage secondary school companion, enjoyed this Peter Pan (jointly directed by Timothy Sheader and Liam Steel) as much as I did. So did the primary school girl with the infectious laugh sitting across the aisle from us. During the interval, small boys climbed up bigger boys and buckled and swashed their waving fists (one child, of contradictory disposition, chanted: “I don’t believe in fairies” between mouthfuls of ice cream, but to my ear his tone lacked conviction). Each of us brought our own level of understanding to this unexpected reworking; each found satisfaction.
The magical elements that have made the tale of the boy who wouldn’t grow up such a family favourite for over a century are all present, correct and spellbinding as ever. If I were to claim “Peter flew!” you’d be right not to believe me. But at times it feels as if he really does – even though there is no effort to hide the bulked-out wire at his back, or the khaki-clad soldiers who fasten and unfasten it there. Another effect – a group of soldiers writhes around a stack of hospital beds piled crazily in the middle of the stage (Jon Bausor’s design).
Writing, direction, design, music and sound, lighting, performances, puppetry, aerial artistry – all blend to suggest an island in the middle of a mermaid-full lagoon where rising waves are about to engulf Peter Pan and Wendy (riveting Hiran Abeysekera and Kae Alexander). For suggestion to work, we, the audience, have to complete the scene with our own imaginations; the company co-opts us to co-create the pretence.
And it is this story-building complicity between auditorium and stage that makes it possible to frame the action in a field hospital without diminishing the horror of war or shredding the fantasy. The production explores the potency of stories. They can shape our actions, for good and for ill. They make us believe in seemingly impossible things – peace in time of war, recovery in time of pain. A fairytale can offer a sideways view of things too awful to look at face on, and in its simplicity help us find a way through complexity. But its power must be respected. Fantasy cannot replace reality. Peter, in refusing to grow up, cuts himself off from the fullness of humanity. It is Wendy, storyteller supreme, who brings this home to him and to us. Deliberately misquoting Peter’s famous cry, she says: “To live would be an awfully big adventure.”
