Stars: 2 out of 5
Pros: The acting is mostly good; Sets look great
Cons: CW’s Captain Hook, most of the songs, and the
crocodile
The Bottom Line:
Basic story fun
But version never takes flight
Pass it right on by
I Don’t Think This Version of Peter Pan Will Ever Grow Up on Me
I have long loved the Disney animated version of Peter Pan, and even the live action
version from a few years back was fun. (At least I thought so,
anyway.) However, the one time I saw the Mary Martin version, I was
less than impressed. That was almost enough to get me to skip last
week’s showing of Peter Pan Live!,
but I decided to give it a try. I should have skipped it.
This is a musical retelling of the story of Peter Pan, and
anyone who is familiar with the story will know what happens
here. Peter (Allison Williams) is the boy who won’t grow up, and
he’s found this is possible in Neverland, a land filled with pirates, Indians,
mermaids, and adventure. He has found the window of the Darling
family and loves listening to the stories Wendy (Taylor Louderman) tells her
brothers John (Jake Lucas) and Michael (John Allyn). When they meet
Peter, he teaches them all to fly and takes them to
Neverland. However, his enemy Captain Hook (Christopher Walken) has
just returned to the island with plans to get his revenge. Will
Wendy be safe? Will Peter prevail?
Once again, this is an all new, live performance of a
classic musical designed to be broadcast on one night only. The sets
were wonderful and were a huge visual draw. In addition to looking
great, they allowed for the song and dance numbers and still left room for the
camera to capture it all. Pretty impressive.
And the story itself is still good. Despite my
complaints to come, I can’t fault that in the slightest. In fact,
Peter is slightly less self-absorbed than he is in other versions of the story,
so that is a definite plus.
So where does this version fail? Part of it is
the music. There were two songs I liked, “I’m Flying” and “I Won’t
Grow Up.” The rest of them were pretty bad and
boring. They didn’t make me want to sing along. The
dancing was more impressive, and it helped make the songs more bearable, but it
could only do so much.
While the acting was mostly good, another huge flaw was Christopher
Walken as Captain Hook. To me, he looked like he was bored with the
entire thing from start to finish. I’m not saying that Hook has to
be over the top, but he needs some life and menace to him. Any scene
he was in was flat. No, he wasn’t as bad as Carrie Underwood last
year, but it was certainly close.
Just like last year, the performances seemed a little
nervous and rushed at the beginning, but as the cast got over their nerves,
things smoothed out. I’m not going to fault them there at
all. In keeping with tradition, a woman played Peter Pan, and
Allison Williams was great as the boy who won’t grow up. She even
made the part where she had to break the fourth wall work, something that Mary
Martin certainly didn’t do. In a tweak of tradition, Christian Borle
played both Mr. Darling and Smee (instead of Hook). Honestly, if I
hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have guessed. The two characters looked and
acted so different. He was great. And Taylor Louderman
was fantastic in what can be the thankless role of Wendy, breathing life into
the character.
Some people complained about seeing the wires when the
characters were flying. That didn’t bother me in the
slightest. It’s a staple of Broadway productions, and that is
essentially what this is. Even in the old version, you could see
those wires, and I found this charming to a certain extent. Besides, how were they supposed to cover
them?
There is one more thing I have to take this production to
task for, however – the crocodile. No, I didn’t expect them to have
a real one on stage with the actors. But who came up with that blue
monstrosity? No, I’m not kidding, it was blue. And it was
very robotic in its movements. It was completely laughable and
detracted as well.
As you can imagine, I won’t be rushing back to watch Peter Pan Live! again. Instead, I’ll stick with the ones I already have when I want
to visit Neverland.
I've never been sold in the non-animated Peter Pan productions. For some reason I can't get past the fact that Peter is always played by a girl. I know it's tradition and all but it just doesn't fit for me. My 4 year old saw a commercial for it and really wants to watch it so we'll be watching it this weekend but I'm not exactly looking forward to it. Walken looked bored in the previews so I didn't figure that was a good sign for the full length movie!
ReplyDeletePeter being played by a girl definitely does bother me as well, although I might have been able to get past that if the songs were better.
DeleteHope you survive your viewing.