It is big, bold, bright, and really rather spectacular, but that isn't necessarily what you want with a production of JM Barrie's unsettling Edwardian classic. Not unless you are doing the pantomime version, and there are many times during this long production when it seems that is exactly what director Jonathan Church thinks he is doing. At others, his approach to the show is so much like a series of set pieces it seems as if he is limbering up for the opening ceremony of some big but cash-strapped sporting event. Little fairy-lightcovered fairies prancing about are a bore, unless of course you happen to be one of the little fairy's parents.
There is some very unhappy casting here. In another, better conceived production, Matthew Kelly might actually make an excellent Captain Hook. He certainly has the right kind of presence, raffish and raddled, teasing and terrorising. The energy levels head upwards every time he appears on stage. But many of the other performances are as lumbering as the production, particularly from those adults charged with playing children. Watching them attempt this difficult feat, images of Teletubbies kept popping into my head. Even Peter Pan is lacking charisma; if he came creeping by my nursery window, I'd say, "Not today thank you very much", and close it firmly.
Church has obviously had considerable resources and the show always looks good. But it is all flourish and no substance. Hook's final descent into the crocodile's mouth as if into the jaws of hell is well conceived, but scenes such as the swimming in the lagoon are just naff, demonstrating less theatrical invention than your average school play. The flying is disappointing, too.
Most of all, the evening fails to confront the darker sides of Barrie's play. Even the return to the nursery is untouched by real emotion, and when Peter raises his knife as if to kill Wendy's sleeping child, Jane, the full horror of the moment is glossed over. The instability of Barrie's text and the way that it is so malleable means that we probably all hold our own version of Peter Pan in our heads. Church's has much in common with Disney's.
· Until January 18. Box office: 0121-236 4455.
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