Culture Watch

Theater: Peter and Wendy

by Kristin Nord

The Mabou Mines revival of Peter and Wendy is once again a runaway hit at the exquisite New Victory Theater in Manhattan. The original award-winning cast of the 1997 production are back, offering a spirited and poignant sendoff.

From the first bars of Johnny Cunningham’s evocative original score, and the appearance of a troupe of puppeteers dressed in elegant Edwardian clothes, ivory hats and veils, it is clear that this Peter Pan is going to bear little resemblance to the saccharine versions so many of us grew up with. Mabou Mines director Lee Breuer and adapter Liza Lorwin have chosen to take us back to the darker world of Scots author Sir James Barrie’s upper class in the early 20th century and to frame the action in a nursery alive with stories.

In this child’s world, a chenille bedspread can become the prow of a pirate ship; a chocolate spaniel can turn into a crocodile that dances a tango. Stars shimmer like beating hearts; the world is rife with possibility. Yet children are seen through Barrie’s unflinchingly honest lens: they are as irrepressible as Peter, and potentially, Barrie writes, “as heartless.”

Designer Julie Archer’s uses the set as a pop-up book, with its elements perpetually reinventing themselves to move us from the nursery to Neverland and back. Cunningham’s score, performed live each night and featuring his virtuosic fiddling and Susan McKeown’s bluesy vocals, is by turns dark, elegaic, witty, and full of abandon.

The visually stunning show, which won Obie Awards for best production and best performance in 1997 --revels in understatement, challenging us to translate the events as they unfold by the imaginative shorthand children have at their command. When the Darling children take flight to Cunningham’s driving reels, the audience sees several small nightgowns swooping and soaring. When Peter is slashed by Capt. Hook’s sword, his wounds appear as flowing red ribbons. The Neverbird, who arrives just in the nick of time to save Peter from perfidy, is as delicate in body and outstretched wings as an origami crane.

The bunraku-style puppets, manned at times by as many as three puppeteers to a role, are able to perform dazzling feats. Peter not only flies and duels, but executes an accomplished highland fling. Nana steals the show as the Darling children’s spaniel governess-turned- crocodile. Shadow puppets serve poignantly in secondary roles; as wolves at one moment, then as the shadowy grownups Peter’s band of “lost boys,” eventually become. The puppeteers are so skillful that after a few moments they fade from consciousness. In a sense they are not unlike the grownups who routinely surround and care for a child yet remain peripheral to that child’s inner life.

Center stage is Karen Kandel, playing Wendy, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, and creating all 20 voices in the 190-minute production. Kandel once devoted four years to building miniatures -- and you have to wonder if the actual physical construction of imaginary worlds has fueled her astonishing performance, enabling her to move from one distinct voice to the next, often at breakneck tempos. With Kandel giving voice to all of the characters, the play remains rooted as a luminous bedtime story, brought to us by an all-powerful, all-knowing mother figure.

Some reviewers have focused on what they have seen as Barrie’s message of loss. But there is a subscript that surfaces as Kandel’s grownup Wendy gently rocks the enraged Peter out of a tantrum in the final act. Just as Wendy knows intuitively to comfort Peter when he needs it, she allows her daughter to test her wings when the time is right. Ultimately the play closes on a parent’s truest challenge -- to encourage children to fly, with the faith that they will know the nursery window will always be open for them.

The production, billed for children 12 and up, has the effect of reducing most adults in the audience to tears. It runs through February 24. Catch it if you can. For tickets, call (212) 239-6200. The New Victory Theater is located at 209 W. 42nd St., just west of Broadway.

Kristin Nord is a University of Missouri Journalism graduate and has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer and New England Monthly, among others. She teaches at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT.