Peter Pan – Rose Theatre, Kingston

Kaine Ruddach and Michelle Bishop in Peter Pan at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. Picture: Mark Douet

Peter Pan continues at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 7 January 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Four adult professionals and a splendid cast of 20 performers from Rose Youth Theatre form the gender-blind cast for this show. The young members work in two teams. It was Green Cast on press night.

The music is pre-recorded rather than live but the cast seems to work happily with it. It’s a show with occasional songs rather than full-blown musical theatre. The slinkily rhythmic melody for the pirates is especially effective (music, lyrics and orchestrations are by Vikki Stone).

The show is framed by a lively grandmother (Hilary Maclean, good), probably 1960s, trying to coax her grandson Ralph (Ella Waldmann, Green Cast) to bed in an old-fashioned nursery.

She ends up telling Ralph a bedtime story, thus becoming a quasi narrator. At the end of the show we learn why she knows the story so well and history – sort of – repeats itself.

Peter Pan is a strange story, redolent with ambiguous subtext. With Evan Placey in the writer’s chair it was bound to become a humane, thoughtful show for today.

The emphasis is firmly on forming loving families – which can take any shape – with a lot of insights into motherhood which is potentially stressful, because children aren’t always cooperative or partners helpful.

Tiger Lily (Shona Maggo, Green cast), a fantasy “Red Indian” in JM Barrie’s original, becomes a lonely figure struggling discreetly with otherness.

Michelle Bishop is outstanding as fraught Mrs Darling, trying to deal with an insolent daughter, a pretty useless husband (Dominic Rye) and comforted only by Nana the dog who is a rather gorgeous life-sized puppet.

Bishop then becomes one of the best Captain Hooks I’ve ever seen. As Jane Hook she is ugly, angry, snarling and using wonderfully distorted vowel sounds, lingering on growling, raucous glottal stops. The only chink in her ruthlessness is her love for her dog, who is of course Nana, and that’s an interestingly original linking idea. Bishop commands the stage when she sings too.

Isla Griffiths (Green cast) is so strong as Wendy – rude to her mother, trying to manage the lost boys and then dealing with an adolescent yearning for Peter – that I initially took her for one of the four core adults. I suspect she has a successful professional career ahead of her, if she wants it.

Rye is good value as silly Mr Darling and as his alter-ego Smee, I shall long treasure the moment with the dog and the poo bag which is lovely comedy. He’s fun in Nana’s kennel at the end too.

Kaine Ruddach’s Peter is naturalistic, convincing and faintly sad. In this version the Lost Boys didn’t fall out of their prams; they were born to people who couldn’t look after them and the happy ending is a lump-in-the-throat moment although, of course, Peter stays in Neverland.

There is, in real life, only one way to stay young for ever. You have to die. Placey gives us Barrie’s most famous line, at the end of Act I to support that point for anyone who wants to reflect on it.

There are some fine theatrical moments in this show directed by Lucy Morrell. The ensemble is beautifully directed. Each of the pirates has a distinct persona and I’ve rarely seen the personalities of the Lost Boys – especially Tootles (Luke Groarke, Green cast) so clearly delineated.

And it sits well on Oli Townsend’s split level set with stairs either side leading to a balcony. There is no actual flying but the solution is neat – lots of arm flapping and ballet lifts followed by a charming sequence with illuminated stick puppets.

Susan Elkin