Peter Pan

Haslingfield Little Theatre presented J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan adapted by Hilary Stokes, who also directed, instead of their usual panto this year.

This well known magical tale about a boy who doesn’t want to grow up switches from the reality of London to the mythical Never Never Land. I am sure you know the tale.  On a visit to the home of the Darling family to recover his shadow, Peter Pan invites the Darling children Wendy, Michael and John to fly off into the night with him to ‘Never-Never Land’ where they meet up with Pirates, Indians and even a crocodile.   

It is always difficult to transfer famous and well-known stories to the stage and, although the pace was reasonable, I felt the Victorian dialogue was difficult to understand at times and I am sure was hard to cope with from the cast’s point of view, particularly Mr and Mrs Darling where it sounded somewhat stilted. I felt the opening scene in the children’s bedroom was too long and drawn out and something went a bit awry with the medicine sequence so that what was meant to be amusing lost its effect.   This was a shame as the Darling family worked hard to get things off the ground. 

 Having taken up the option to adapt the story (with the relevant permission) it is surprising, to me at least, that the dialogue wasn’t more updated.

The majority of the large cast involved in this show were young people from the HLT youth  section who I felt all gave good accounts of themselves. The commitment these young actors showed was admirable. 

Among the younger actors we enjoyed strong performances from Alex Coleridge (John Darling) and Lily Goodwin (as Wendy) both ably supported by George Juckes (Michael Darling). The audience also enjoyed a lively and confident performance by Zak Bowyer as Peter Pan.

I thought the Lost Boys (played by the West Team at the Saturday evening performance) worked extremely well together. There was a good sense of teamwork here. I particularly enjoyed Tootles (Katie Chambers).  The Braves did not feature heavily in this script but when they did they were fine.  We didn’t have a physical Tinkerbell just a colourful dancing light in the capable hands of Eveni Ison which I thought worked fine.

Of course, everyone’s favourite villain is Captain Hook and Phil Chapman was absolutely excellent.  He has good comic timing and was funny as well as villainous.  Hook had good support from Matt Dye as Smee, Mark Thurman as Starkey and the rest of the pirate band. A lot of attention had obviously been paid to the fight scenes and there were some pretty enthusiastic sword fighting from all concerned.

The one constant in any HLT production is the quality of the costumes and setting.  Judith Willows’ set design was excellent and, as always, beautifully painted.  The costumes, courtesy of Terry Baker and Jenny Hains were both colourful and impressive.  Excellent work was carried out by the hardworking stage crew as they transformed the Darlings’ house to the various Neverland locations, to the pirate ship and then back to the Darlings’ house. I thought Phil Dale’s lighting design was very good and the few sound effects (by Charlie Smith) just right as was the scene change music.  Having said that I was not quite sure how the flying effect was meant to work with the cut outs.  Maybe I missed the point there. 

Overall this was an enjoyable evening, and it was a really nice touch to have Team East, who had performed at the matinee, join the Saturday evening cast at the curtain call.  A touch which showed the audience that HLT have a lot of up and coming young actors many of whom I hope to see on stage in future productions.  A delightful end to Haslingfield’s year

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