Mabou Mines’ Peter and Wendy Soars

Children giggled.  Adults wept.  “Mommy, why was that lady crying?  Why are people sad?” a little boy waiting in line to use the restroom at the lovely New Victory Theatre on 42nd Steet asked.  I heard her try to explain that it was about loss, and love, but he,  about 6, was, like the chilldren in J.M. Barrie’s masterpiece, Peter Pan, “gay, and innocent, and heartless.”    Mabou Mines’ version of the story opens by reminding you that “all children grow up” and that “two is the beginning of the end.”  Though full of adventure and fun, there is a melancholy  in Barrie’s story about the boy who never grows up.  The melancholy is hiding in plain sight, like the kiss at the side of Mrs. Darling’s mouth that her daughter Wendy could never get.  Children won’t notice it.  But adults won’t be able to miss it.  I cried during the last half hour of the show more than I did at King Lear.

But it’s also lots of fun.   From the moment it begins, it’s breathtakingly beautiful, subtle, funny, fresh.  And the sound effects and music are provided by a top-notch Celtic band, playing the exquisite music of  the late Scottish fiddler/composer Johnny Cunninghamincluding Irish fiddler Tola Custy, Scottish singer Siobhan Miller, harpist Laoise Kelly,  guitarist Aidan Brennan, Steph Geremia, Alan Kelly and Jay Peck– not to mention the slides and booms and beeps.  Tinker Bell is a cymbal in performer Karen Kandel’s hand.  Kandel, who has won an OBIE award for this performance, does all the voices.  There’s also  terrific video, particularly the sequence of the children’s flight to Never Land, with a kid’s eye view zooming along over the top of things.  Director Lee Breur assumes children are just as smart as grown-ups, and the show moves quickly.  Simply, this is one of the best, most enchanting, fully satisfying pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.  Ever.    If you haven’t taken the kids to New Victory, it’s well worth the commute– the lovely old theatre on 42nd Street specializes in children’s theatre from top-rate companies around the world.  There are booster stools in the bathrooms, and toys for sale in the lobby.  When you look up, you see carved angels.  And it’s a fraction of the price you pay for Broadway extravaganzas aimed at kids (and more than twice as satisfying).  The New Victory presents real family fare, with simplicity and giggle for kids,  depth and nuance for adults.

Liza Lorwin’s adaptation mixes story theatre, reading from  Barrie’s sly, droll prose, with the visual brio that the experimental troupe Mabou Mines is known for.   Designer Julie Archer was inspired by pop-up books, and early on in the story we watch as the home of the Darlings, and Nana’s kennel, literally unfold and expand, just like those paper wonders.  While Kandel narrates and speaks,  characters are  moved and embodied  by a crack team of puppetteers with veiled faces.  Kandel even does the expressive “woof” of Nana.  It takes several puppeteers to move the dog nurse around, what with all those legs and ears and tail, and she seems 100% alive.  Early on, when the Darlings are mourning the children who’ve hearlessly flown away, Nana wipes a paw on a pillow, sniffs it, and blows her nose on her ears, before howling (Archer  designed the set, puppets, and lights).  At one point Kandel somehow manages to be both Mr. and Mrs. Darling at once (spinning a bowler hat on a cane), as well as the narrator.  It’s an incredible tour de force, but it’s also filled with emotion and heart.

I first saw Peter and Wendy in 2002 (had picked up the soundtrack in 1999, because I was a fan of Johnny Cunningham.  The show is so touching and so effective that I had entirely forgotten that it was also appropriate for children.   More than appropriate– necessary.  If you want your children to understand how wonderful theatre can be, this is the one.  Everything happens in front of your eyes, but it insists you believe.  The puppeters (including Basil Twist and seven others) turn cloth into people, wooden dolls into pirates and then boys right in front of us.  All of the costumes are shades of off-white (design by Sally Thomas); the color is left to your imagination. Cunningham’s music (you can listen to samples on Itunes) has yearning, excitement, joy and wistulness.  It’s hard to believe he and Barrie didn’t sit down together to collaborate (in fact, Cunningham uses Barrie’s lyrics in the

pirate’s song).  Barrie’s play predates the 1911 novel that this show works from by seven years; the novel expresses more of the grown-up longing for the distant shore of Neverland, where “on these magic shores” children play forever… but though we can still hear the surf, we shall land there no more.

Peter Pan is not just about the adventures of childhood– it’s also about yearning for a mother.  Though we are told early on that Peter considered mothers “over-rated persons” (to the giggles of the under four foot crowd), Peter entices Wendy to be a mother to him and the Lost Boys  (she tucks them in, tells them stories, gives them medicine).  When nemesis Captain Hook, who privately worries that his behavior may not be “classy,” plots against Peter, he and the other pirates plot to steal Wendy and make her their mother.  One of the pirates doesn’t understand what a mother is–  Hook explains, using the example of the Never bird who flies over her nest that has slipped into the lagoon, rather than desert it.   Later, when Peter is abandoned on Marooner’s rock to die, it is the Never bird who rescues him.  Somehow that moment strikes a nerve and all through the house, not only mothers sniffled. There are rousing fights with the pirates (and a cannon explosion), and a comic tango by the crocodile who wants to eat more of Hook. She sings that she wants to chew him (and wash it down with crocodile tears),while the puppeteer holding the crocodile dips exotically.  Of course, Hook knows when the crocodile is near because of the ticking clock inside her– but when the clock winds down, the game is up.  That old devil time is after all of us.  And the fights are exciting too (fight direction by B.H.Barry).

Peter and Wendy has played in Edinburgh and Dublin, and won a Village Voice OBIE Award in its last outing, as well as one for Kandel.  This show is full of gorgeous words, haunting images, lovely music, spirit and imagination, everything that theatre can be.  It’s not to be missed.

Peter and Wendy plays at the New Victory Theatre, 209 W. 42nd St, NYC.  Thurs.-Fri. 7 PM, Sat. 2 and 7 pm, and Sun. 3 pm, through May 22.  Tickets 646-223-3010 or www.newvictory.org

There is a post-show talk-back Sunday, May 15 after the matinee, and a sign-interpreted performance Saturday, May 21 at 2pm.