With the family favourite Peter Pan, there are certain things audiences come to expect.
And nobody realizes this better than Neptune Theatre’s artistic director Jeremy Webb, writer and director of the musical comedy version of the J.M. Barrie classic now running over the holiday season.
“You will believe people can fly, you will believe in faeries and you will smile at a crocodile,” says the Halifax theatre veteran who’s giving the 115-year-old property a lively modern update with some creative casting, current music, and a British pantomime flavour that encourages audience participation, especially from its youngest attendees.
Webb promises a bigger production than last year’s holiday presentation of Cinderella, which became the highest grossing show in Neptune history, and he says Peter Pan looks to exceed it in popularity. It’s a bold boast worthy of Pan’s own braggadocio, but the play backs it up in the scenes performed for the media prior to the opening. In one, the ageless sprite Pan (played with athletic vigor by Toronto’s Brandon Antonio) leads the Lost Kids through a fist-pumping, hip-swaying version of Heather Rankin's Superstars, and in another Captain Hook (Kelly Holiff, making her Neptune debut) tempts one of the Darling boys, John (played by Joseph Zita) with joining her pirate crew on an impressive sailing ship set by designer Tamara Marie Kucheran that rises up out of the stage.
“Hook is offering a great life! As the pirates in this version say, it comes with rum, medical, rum, excellent dental, and rum. Why wouldn’t you stay?” grins Webb, underlining why Peter Pan still appeals to theatregoers of all ages.
Younger kids seeing it for the first time will marvel at the magic and cheeky humour of it all, while adults will feel pangs of nostalgia as they remember a time when they didn’t want to grow up, simultaneously embracing the play’s themes about the importance of family.
“Last year I had such a great time watching my kids enjoy Cinderella, and for the entire year they’ve been quoting it back at me,” says Webb, adding that his children also contributed a joke to the Peter Pan script involving a reference to Disney’s megahit Frozen.
“Thank goodness we get something new to reference. So it’ll be a great show for young people to have their first theatrical experience with, for families with kids as young as four years old. It’s big and colourful, and they get to scream stuff out at the top of their lungs, which is always fun.”
The template for Peter Pan remains pretty much the same in the Neptune version, with some intriguing new twists to make it a lively and fun experience.
Peter and the Darling children (also including Julie Lumsden as Wendy and Jeremy Legat as Michael) using Tinkerbell’s faerie dust to fly to the rechristened Never-You-Mind-Land to meet up with the mixed-gender Lost Kids and confront a female Hook, while performing a mix of modern pop, pirate shanties and songs by East Coast artists like Christina Martin, Ian Sherwood and T. Thomason.
After growing up with the animated 1953 Disney version of Peter Pan, Toronto-based Holiff calls the opportunity to play Hook “very surreal”. But she believes her Cruella de Vil-styled approach to the pirate captain not only brings a completely different energy to a character traditionally steeped in decades of moustache-twirling melodrama, it creates new complexity in the relationship between heroes and villains.
"It’s big and colourful, and they get to scream stuff out at the top of their lungs, which is always fun.”
- Jeremy Webb, director and writer of Neptune Theatre’s Peter Pan
“It changes the dynamic between all the characters. So my dynamic with Wendy is very different than what it would have been if Hook had been cast traditionally. And I love that, I think it’s amazing,” says Holiff, who calls her Hook “a total diva” whose emotions can change on a dime.
“And my dynamic with Peter Pan is a different thing, it’s powerful. Because a woman is taking on Peter Pan, and why shouldn’t she?”
Faced with a formidable foe, Antonio says his Peter is up to the challenge of taking on a Captain Hook with a sultry side as well as a tyrannical temper.
Displaying his fair share of boyish charm, with pointy Pan ears still applied after the sneak media preview, he feels his role is the ultimate form of play-acting.
“I feel like Peter Pan is something anyone can channel, like their inner child, which I channel a lot because I am kind of a goofball,” says Antonio with a broad smile, adding that the part of Pan requires all of his energy, a childlike sense of wonder and a certain amount of fearlessness since he’s never flown onstage via a wire before.
“I’m totally here for it. Especially as an actor and a performer, you need to be able to let go. Whether you’re auditioning or doing a show, living this crazy life, you have to strip away your worries and your baggage and you have to remember what it’s like to play and to be open to other people.”
If you go: The play runs through Jan. 5 with a talkback night on Wednesday, Dec. 4, a relaxed performance on Thursday, Jan. 2 and a pay-what-you-can show on its final night, Sunday, Jan. 5. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday with 2 p.m. weekend matinees. Tickets are available at the Neptune Theatre box office on Argyle Street and online at www.neptunetheatre.com.
