Ask almost any child—or adult, for that matter—to explain what the beloved literary classic Peter Pan is about, and you’ll probably get several different answers, each depending on what the explainer fancies.
“A boy who can fly,” says the matter-of-fact adult.
“Pirates, arrr! And Indians!” shouts the hyperactive little boy.
“A girl named Wendy, and mermaids, and fairies, and pixie dust!” exclaims the wide-eyed little girl.
For Patricia M. Troxel, director of PCPA’s holiday production of Peter Pan, it’s about a young boy who comes back from Neverland to hear the story of Cinderella.
Ardent fans of Walt Disney’s cartoon might be asking, “Wasn’t he coming back for his shadow?”
Well, for this production, Troxel—who also serves as PCPA’s resident dramaturge—chose to get her story straight from the source. Before he was a beloved Disney character, Peter Pan first appeared in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird by popular Victorian London writer James M. Barrie. In 1904, Barrie wrote a play based on that character called Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. The play was so successful it was later turned into an artfully crafted children’s book and a novel.
Barrie’s classic story has since been told time and time again, in books, in movies, and on the stage. It even popularized the name Wendy.
“Classics are classics not because they’re distant, but because they tell us something about the human spirit and the human experience,” Troxel explained. “I think the success of a really great story is our ability to tell it well … with novelty and innovation.”
So what does PCPA’s Peter Pan tell us?
Childhood Revisited
Troxel said one of her favorite scenes in the play is a climactic duel between Captain Hook and Peter. The two banter back and forth, clashing tongues as much as sabers.
Hook, frustrated by Peter’s ability to fight and fly at the same time, yells out, “Who and what are you?”
To which a jubilant Pan replies, “I am youth, I am joy, I am freedom!”
These qualities—youth, joy, and freedom—Troxel said, are at the heart of her production.
“Those are some things people are really in search of,” she said. “They want to rediscover what’s youthful, joyful, and free—especially, I think, given the recent world circumstances.”
And some of the most influential things for children are the stories they hear growing up and the imaginary lands they visit through books.
“The story of Peter Pan started as a book, and I just love the idea of opening a book to read a really lovely story,” Troxel said.
She also encouraged her crew and actors to indulge their inner children throughout the production process.
“This production is really about time and timelessness,” said DeAnne Kennedy, PCPA’s resident scenic designer and the designer for Pan. “We really wanted to capture the joy and fun of childhood, and show the differences between kids and adults.”
Those contrasts can be seen most readily in the two worlds—Victorian London and Neverland—inhabited by the Darling children. Kennedy captures the much more somber and austere mood of Victorian London—“the real world”—by incorporating cooler colors and even metalwork into her set. The three Neverland settings, on the other hand, are filled with bright, warm colors, and a diverse range of textured materials.
Kennedy said she and Troxel wanted Neverland to be the more vibrant of the two realities because, “When you’re a kid, the places you go to in your head when you play are so much more real to you.”
Still, the two worlds are tied together by the essence of time—the image of a Roman numeral clock face superimposed on the stage floor—and narrative voiceovers, like a mother reading her children a story.
At first glance, the worlds appear incredibly different and independent of each other. However, various production details indicate they are intricately interwoven.
“What makes live theater so exciting in a world that is so CG is that you can transform things on stage,” Kennedy explained. “Everything has a dual purpose.”
For example, the toy chest that Peter uses as a landing point in the nursery is transformed into a pirate’s chest on Captain Hook’s ship, the Jolly Roger. And the tree stumps in the Neverland forest are designed to become barrels on the pirate ship.
“You turn them around, and they have banding just like a real barrel,” Kennedy said, adding that a little of the bark can be seen on the sides. “It creates a creepy look for a pirate ship.”
Also, the infamous plank Hook forces children to walk also serves as the captain’s palanquin litter. The branchy structure that bolsters the plank against the steps of the stage becomes an armrest.
Director Troxel revealed that the theme of duality was embraced partly out of necessity: “Barrie lived in a very beautiful world with lots of money where [theater-goers] would wait for the sets to be changed.” At PCPA, the crew has to work with a much smaller space and a considerably smaller budget. Nonetheless, Troxel said, the theme also adds to “the richness of living more actively in an imaginary world.”
Along with the set, some of the actors end up playing dual roles.
Erik Stein, the man who brings Captain Hook to life, appears early on in the show as Dr. Darling; and Clare Lopez pulls double duty as Liza, the Darlings’ maid, and the crocodile.
According to Troxel, there’s a longstanding theater tradition that the man who plays Hook also plays Dr. Darling because the first Hook, Gerald DeMaurier, wanted to play both parts.
“He was a major force in theater and could make those requests, and audiences loved seeing the childish Dr. Darling versus the despiser of childhood, Hook, as the same man,” she explained. “When we decided to stay with the tradition, I wanted audiences to see that doubles are everywhere. So the furniture and props double, as does Liza/crocodile—in both cases she wants so desperately to be a part of the action and affection but, because of her station/position as the maid or as the crocodile, she can’t.”
Another innovative element of the show is having the actors do things the audience typically wouldn’t expect of them.
“I find there’s something comic and delightful and fresh about having actors who normally don’t dance do very specific dancing,” Troxel said. “So the pirates dance the tango, they dance the tarantella, and they dance the waltz. … It’s something, so far, the audience and the actors have both tremendously enjoyed.”
As Hook, Stein said he wanted a role that would get him out of his comfort zone as a resident actor and would allow local audiences to see him in a different light.
“I like to pretend that I’m a brilliant dancer, because I’m so not,” Stein said with a chuckle. “But Captain Hook believes he’s a great dancer. He believes he’s great at everything.”
Still, Stein said he strived to keep his acting as simple and “in the moment” as possible.
“The first thing I had to do was deal with his obsession. He’s kind of got this Captain Ahab thing of, ‘I need to get this guy!’” he said.
But that doesn’t mean Hook is a one-dimensional character.
“I like to pretend I’m playing the hero even when I’m not,” Stein explained. “Peter Pan is all about games. Hook wants to play the game, but here he has this young kid who’s always changing the rules. The joke I tell Natasha [Harris, who plays Peter] is I would win if she didn’t cheat by flying or moving the stars so I can’t navigate my ship.”
Harris has her own view on the matter: “Hook could win if he would only think lovely thoughts,” she said. “Peter is so ready to play games because the game is what keeps the child alive.”
Harris should have a good understanding of what makes Peter tick—she’s wanted to play the part since she was a child.
“Growing up, I watched the Mary Martin version more times than I can count,” she said. “And when I was about 10 or 12 years old, I saw the Kathy Rigby production in San Francisco. My friend and I sat waaay in the back, and we were enthralled by it all—especially seeing someone fly. And after it was done, we raced down to the orchestra to pick up all the pixie dust.”
But when she got cast in the part, Harris said she “put the Kathy Rigby version as far away from me as possible” and started watching home videos of herself and her brother and sister goofing around as kids.
“I looked at my little brother, who was this sprightly little kid, and kindly stole some of his mannerisms and speech patterns. So it still feels new but it’s still familiar and comfortable,” she said.
The true measure of her success, Harris said, is the reactions she gets from children in the audience.
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“It’s so beautiful how connected you feel with little kids—like when Hook is lurking in the background and one of them yells, ‘Look out behind you, Peter!’ It’s a beautiful honor, and I hope I’m doing the part justice,” she said.
Stein said he feels the same level of humility when playing Hook.
“For many kids, this is their first theatrical experience. I feel it’s a pretty big responsibility as an actor, because this is your chance to hook them for life, so to speak, as a theatergoer,” he said. “There’s an immediacy factor with kids, if we’ve lost them or not. Adults have the polite factor; they can trick you into thinking they like you. It doesn’t work that way with kids.”
Based on the reviews and box office numbers PCPA has been getting for this production, it seems the audiences’ love of Peter Pan is anything but make-believe.
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 2-9, 2010.