JM Barrie’s 1904 play about a boy who never ages gets older by more than a century in this adaptation by dramatist Gary Owen. It’s set in present-day south Wales, making the focus as much Barry as Barrie.
Owen wrote powerfully about family dysfunction in his 2015 Royal Court success Violence and Son, and, though his Peter Pan is pitched for families, he hasn’t abandoned domestic sociology. The Darling children can fly off with Peter and Tinker Bell because their parents are exhaustedly neglectful, earning money in the never-never-land of the austerity economy.
As Owen’s Killology (2017) explored the escapist landscape of video games, it’s a surprise that Peter’s fantastic alternative world involves no digital interaction. This Neverland is a children’s playground, a possibly queasy choice as Pan fanatic Michael Jackson set up a dubious juvenile wonderland in honour of Barrie, whose own fascination with children has raised suspicion. Due to his broad target audience, Owen can’t explore those ideas, but focuses instead, as much current culture does, on the impulse to tell stories.
As visualised by director Martin Constantine and designer April Dalton, the show is an awfully high adventure. The cast deserve a frequent flyer card as they reach for the lights, expertly counterweighted by shadowing technicians moving in unison. With characters also frequently descending through the floor, there is an unusually strong sense of the stage as a vertical space.
Commendably avoiding the insipidity that can afflict Peter and Tinker Bell, James Phoon and Carlie Enoch are sometimes perhaps a little too sipid, exuding comic cockiness and controlling know-all-ness respectively. Making her professional debut, Georgia Jackson impressively brings intelligence and adolescent volatility to Wendy. Imogen Slaughter enjoyably doubles as Captain Hook and Mrs Darling, an intriguing psychological variation on the common pairing of the patriarch and the pirate.
Though the need for broad appeal makes Owen’s writing less vivid than in his adult plays, this is a verbally and visually smart cover version of a seasonal standby.
At Storyhouse, Chester, until 12 January.
