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Pirates! Crocodiles! The exuberance of human flight! Ella Hickson’s rollicking adaptation honours the adventure and enchantment of JM Barrie’s 1904 play about a boy who won’t grow up while also exploring its psychological depths. It features a nimble Daniel Krikler as a feral, sybaritic Peter Pan, Hannah Saxby as a physically gung-ho, jolly-super Wendy Darling, and Toby Stephens as a winningly louche Captain Hook. The design, the effects and the vibe are all spot-on. If it doesn’t quite make you believe in fairies, it will convince you of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) ability to mount a lavish family entertainment. Weird that the company has chosen to remount this child-friendly show now and programme the chewier Twelfth Night for the Barbican’s lucrative December-January Christmas slot. Weird too that director Jonathan Munby hasn’t curbed some of the flab and faff that creeps in at the edges of Hickson’s script, which the company first staged in 2013. But that’s the RSC for you: schooled on Bardic reverence, and with a captive audience in their primary home in Stratford-upon-Avon they think every show should last nearly three hours. Barrie’s play, which he turned into a book in 1911, captures the moment carefree childhood tips into the enticing but scary world of being a grown-up. Here, the sprite-like Peter may herald the romantic awakening of Wendy Darling when he appears at her nursery window, but she’s already been thrust into the world of adult concerns. She and her brothers John and Michael are adopted and the death of their fourth sibling, Thomas, has driven a wedge of tragedy between their loving parents (a warm and stately Lolita Chakrabarti and Stephens, doing the traditional double with Hook). Flying to Neverland with Peter and his several capering shadows represents an escape back to innocence, but also a bid to find Thomas and comprehend death. This is heavy stuff but lightly done. Elsewhere, Hickson strikes a less certain balance between celebrating Barrie and reappraising his Edwardian values. The reordering of the title characters’ names hints that Wendy will be foregrounded and have more agency. But she’s still immediately pigeonholed into the role of long-suffering surrogate mum to Peter’s fellow Lost Boys on arrival in Neverland. Hickson airbrushes out Barrie’s vain, siren-like mermaids and the problematic “Redskin” characters apart from Tiger-Lily, here played by Ami Tredrea as a breeches-clad Asian warrior wielding twin katana swords. When Wendy invites her and Tink (Charlotte Mills as the earthily corporeal version of the traditional skittering fairylight) to form a gang like the boys rather than compete with one another, it feels a little forced. Tink’s jealous bid to get Wendy killed early on is politely ignored. Hickson is sharper and funnier when skewering male privilege in Stephens’s Mr Darling and Fred Woodley Evans’s John, who on meeting Tiger-Lily immediately imagines “explaining things to her” while she irons his handkerchiefs. Her most daring modern foregrounding is of a queer subtext. Michael (Kwaku Mills) and cabin boy Martin (Joe Hewetson) are both probably gay. Smee (a deliciously languid Scott Karim is besotted with Hook; and the effete Etonian pirate is himself obsessed with Peter as a symbol of his lost youth. Krikler brings an anarchic attractiveness to Peter, even though as a creature of pure impulse he’s often wilful and sometimes tedious. Likewise, Saxby is a spirited, energetic Wendy even though the character is necessarily a bit of a bore. Stephens’s Hook, irritably downing daiquiris in a black wig and makeup like a kabuki Gustav von Aschenbach, is a masterful comic turn. “That’s right darling,” he drawls as a queasy Wendy scurries to the poop railing. “Everything aft and back in the game!” There are jarring modern clangers in the script (“bog off”, “snotfrogs”, “Regreta Garbos”), but generally panto antics are kept to a minimum. Colin Richmond’s sets, including a full pirate frigate, are a detailed delight and the choreography, combat and aerial scenes are beautifully done. On balance, magic. Peter Pan & Wendy at the Barbican Theatre, until 22 November, barbican.org.uk.
