I'm not going to deny that Peter Pan is one of my weak spots as a result of its vibrant feel-good energy. It's got rousing, youthful numbers, a sometimes overwhelming bent toward wonder and awe, clever lyrics and sharp, campy wit, and even a few sweet moments that pull at your heart. But NBC's latest televised broadcast of an iconic musical was not all romp and joy; while it avoided some of the major pitfalls of last year's Sound of Music, this production featured some exceptional high points as well as serious problem-spots. Before we start: I will not be comparing this to other productions in the past, so don't expect that. Cathy Rigby's production is, for me, utterly perfect. Oh, and a lot of people are complaining that the acting in this show isn't very convincing, but just so you know, the point of Peter Pan is that it is fantastic and even farcical, so nuance isn't really called for. Stop bellyaching. Okay, let's go.
Starting with the cast. Allison Williams looked to be a very convincing, handsome fairy-boy, but even her bleach-white teeth couldn't entirely mask her shortcomings in musical theatre. Apparently unable to hold a note for much time, and performing almost no dancing (I thought she was playing an energetic boy?), Williams failed to steal my heart as cleanly as she did the wide-eyed and disturbingly desperate Wendy Darling (Taylor Louderman). I was especially disappointed that her woeful accent faltered more often than the slow (and very visible) wires used to carry her overhead, and her crow was just laughable.
Christopher Walken, on the other hand, rocked as Captain Hook, though part of his success was purely a result of his casting. Nuanced and campy, Walken also at times appeared to forget (or not care) that he was being broadcast, like when he opened his mouth to hold an obviously dubbed long note about four beats after it had already started. He charmed with his tapdancing prowess, and even when he broke character to speak lines in his typical Queens-ish accent. Besides his Chola eyebrows and monstrous beauty mark, Walken's costume and mannerisms made Hook at times seem to be an aged, bitter drag queen, a decision I would applaud if it were intentional.
I was very happy to see Kelli O'Hara and Minnie Driver pop in for some bonus star power. O'Hara nailed her stuff, no surprise there, and Driver pushed some waterworks in her roughly three minutes on stage/screen. The rest of the cast felt skilled and energetic, notably the dancing ensembles of pirates, lost boys, and natives. Christian Borle especially stole my attention in his dual role as Smee and Mr Darling. I have to say, though, that the design of the natives and the lost boys didn't work so well. Though the natives arguably were dressed in more authentic garb (that is, bare skin), their paint was just weird, and the costumes had some funky turquoise colors that fit well with the set, for better or worse. And the lost boys looked like almost-neon last-century German schoolchildren, complete with fetishized twinkiness. Sorry, but it happened.
Two elements of this production struck me as shockingly excellent. First, the psychedelic sets were huge and radiant, feeling like the other recently realized fantasy realms of Oz or Wonderland. I don't think the lights always played off it the best, and the camerawork could have been better at times (we rather missed Hook's attack on Peter, which made the latter's forced "To die will be an awfully big adventure" fall flat, and then Tiger Lily popped up like a mile away in what looked more like a prayer than a rescue attempt), but the set itself was gorgeous. Second, the changes to lyrics and dialogue made me very happy. Mrs Darling's added lullaby at the beginning made "Distant Melody" much more powerful later (and though I wanted more Kelli O'Hara, I was sad that Peter did not sing the duet with Wendy). Hook's tapdancing number and Peter's sung memory of running away also shone.
But a few new moments didn't work as well. My first disappointment was that Tink wasn't a real light on stage, but that's just my little stubborn preference. Hook's plot to bomb the island and thus break Peter's heart just sort of disappears without explanation. Why include the threat if you're not going to follow through? Chekhov's Gun, yo! We could have at least had Hook use the bomb at the last minute, as a final damning threat against the lot of lost boys (Cathy Rigby's production did this, and they didn't even go through the charade of painting red Xes all over Neverland). Oh, and the little addition of Wendy and Peter finding the "dozing" maid in the closet who appears dead. That was a thing. And nobody knows why.
Before we're done, we have to address the white elephant here. Or at least the white. Because the "Indians" have always been the most controversial part of Peter Pan in any of its incarnations. Disney perhaps depicted the most racist stereotypes (reducing a skin color to a tale of a man blushing from a woman's kiss while pointedly coloring the natives' skin tomato-red), but they have been present in the stage musical, too. "Ugg-a-Wugg" may be the show's most rousing number, but it is also not-so-subtly telling us that Native American languages are made up of absurd vocal patterns and children's rhymes (not to mention that the lyrics call Tiger Lily a "brave noble redskin"). Besides this positive change, though, it seemed like NBC employed a little overkill in racial diversity by casting an ethnically mixed group of Natives, which is totally fine, until you notice the almost ubiquitous whiteness of the rest of the cast, especially the lost boys.
I applaud the effort to change this to reclaim adulterated and mocked cultural territory. I also don't entirely know that this production was the only step to that end. It's tricky stuff, because while I would love to see an authentic Native presence on stage, I don't know that it can be in any Peter Pan adaptation because J.M. Barrie's own writings were deeply racist. Wow, that went around a rabbit trail. Point Being: This production was blessedly less offensive, so there's that.
IMDb: Peter Pan Live!
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