One of my earliest memories is of being stood in a theatre and Peter Pan telling an enrapt audience that for Tinkerbell to live, we all had to believe in fairies. Suddenly the entire room was lit with a million little lights that I truly believed were the fairies that all of us children had sworn we believed in and it was such a magical moment.
Fast forward around 30 years or so and I find myself back in my seat preparing to watch Peter Pan again and this time with my daughter at my side. Was it as magical? Not quite. But it was pretty darn good.
Marti Pellow lead this band of actors as the villainous Captain James Hook and what a villain he did make. His opening number with his pirate dancers was quite fantastic and when he breached the front of the stage to sail his ship into the audience, we were more than impressed.
However, the true star of this show was Darren Day. From his incredible, yet completely unrelated impressions to his musical number with 6 crocodiles wearing pink tutus he was incredible from start to finish as Mr Smee and what really kept the pantomime going.
It was nice to see that all of the cast had incredible voices and the rendition of “Voice Within” from Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Wendy and Tiger Lily really did blow my socks off; some major power-house voices.
I loved the way in which they had brought Tink into the 21st century by giving her sparkly Converse shoes and a mobile phone.
This wasn’t the story of Peter Pan I was expecting – it had definitely been altered a lot from J.M Barrie’s original version or in fact any version I have seen on stage. As well as the dog Nana, who was fantastic but sadly only appeared for a brief few minutes, the first half did seem a little slow.
There were lots of static dialogue which personally for me has no huge place in a pantomime as the words tend to usually be for jokes and to lead from one song to another. Whilst hilariously funny, particularly in the second half, The Grumbleweeds were particularly redundant characters who used up time and seemed to be there just as fillers whilst set or costume was changed.
The staging was incredible; WARNING if you have young children, the crocodile scenes are pretty scary, especially if you’re in the front few rows. It was at that point alone that I was glad we were up in the balcony as I am not sure that my four-year-old would have been quite so brave in the front rows.
As I said the staging and scenery were incredible as were the costumes or lack thereof…. I won’t spoil it but you’ll get quite an eyeful at one point in the show.
Again, whilst Tiger Lily was incredible, her role was so far removed from the original story, she appeared to be there to incorporate the amazing tumblers whose tricks were jaw dropping, especially when they dared to incorporate fire.
Overall, I thought the show was fantastic, but considering it is a story J M Barrie wrote about Wendy, Michael and John and their adventures in Neverland with Peter Pan, these characters probably spent less time on stage than the supporting cast. The story primarily revolves around Mr Smee and Captain Hook.
If you’re looking for a laugh and great entertainment then this show should definitely be on your watchlist this Christmas, but I’d advise for children around 7+ not only because of the crocodile but because of the amount of dialogue and downtime between musical numbers. My four-year-old sadly got bored in between numbers, so not one I’d say for the little ones but one I would definitely watch again.
Reviewer - Katie Davis
on - 17/12/19
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