Jake Quickenden in Peter Pan – A Musical Adventure at Blackpool Opera House
Peter Pan – A Musical Adventure continues at Blackpool Opera House until 7 January 2018.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
It sounds like a drama student’s holiday homework question but what is the difference between a Christmas pantomime and a “musical adventure” presented during the festive season?
Award-winning Selladoor is keen to stress that this latest adaptation of JM Barrie’s timeless tale – specially created for Blackpool Opera House – is the latter not the former and even has the wise-cracking, strangely camp Smee tell us: “if you want panto go to the Grand.”
And there’s the rub. The council owned Opera House (capacity around 3,000) and the charitable Grand (capacity just over 800) are only a couple of hundred yards apart, in what isn’t exactly the country’s (or even the county’s) biggest conurbation area.
That’s why when the bigger of the two venues entered into the potentially lucrative festive market some three or so years ago a gentleman’s agreement was struck that there would be a clear distinction between what they would stage.
It just about worked with A Christmas Carol (2015) but went pear-shaped when last year’s Great Expectations was scrapped at the last minute.
That’s when Selladoor stepped up to the plate for this year and with a marketing budget which wouldn’t shame a West End show swamped the town’s advertising bins and public transport with posters almost identical to the Grand’s return of Cinderella – celebrating a successful 21-year association with Martin Dodd’s UK Productions.
Still, Peter Pan is a tried and trusted festive favourite with a well-known plot, so it was surely only coincidence that its cast was revealed to be a familiar collection of television names and past pop favourites?
It’s not as if Barrie’s fusion of darkness and light, happiness and sorrow, hope and hopelessness would have to trim its sails to include hearty renditions of Kool and the Gang’s ‘Celebration’, Edwin Starr’s ‘War’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Man in the Mirror’ and the Bruno Mars/Mark Ronson floor-filling ‘Uptown Funk’ was it?
Little wonder then that X Factor (2012 and 2014) and I’m a Celebrity (2015 runner-up) veteran Jake Quickenden, making his stage and acting debut as a bearded, older and more toned than usual Peter Pan, doesn’t seem quite sure how to pitch his performance.
Likewise former Brooksider and TV regular Jennifer Ellison seems to have been left a little high and dry to interpret a female Captain Hook called Jasmine. She plays it pretty much as a Principal Bad Boy minus the thigh-slapping and just about gets away with it.
Blackpool’s own Maureen Nolan has the unenviable task of putting meat on the bones of the soppy Mrs Darling and does this largely by repeatedly singing Nat King Cole’s ‘Nature Boy’.
Local commercial station Radio Wave’s breakfast host Scott Gallagher is a surprising success as Smee, revealing good comedy timing and ignoring the diktat that this is not a pantomime.
Special mention too for Grace Osborn’s Wendy – a charismatic bundle of energy and enthusiasm who easily steals every scene she is in.
Director Kirstie Davis has worked hard to keep things tight – and a running time of just two hours is a good idea. Similarly writer Robert Marden has stripped the story to the bone – then somewhat confusingly added a post Second World War touch to underscore Barrie’s messages.
Designer Jessica Curtis deserves praise for using the enormous stage well with a combination of sailing ship and circus ring.
The Grand has already revealed next year’s panto – Beauty and the Beast. Wonder what the Opera House will come up with?
Robin Duke
www.wintergardensblackpool.co.uk
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