Chicago Tribune Reprint

Short ‘Pan’ tinkers well with conventions

July 16, 2004|By Michael Phillips, Tribune theater critic. Reprint

Summer on Navy Pier: Trinkets are jumpin’, the cotton candy is high and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater is offering its all-ages diversions under the LaSalle Bank Family Festival of Plays sponsorship. This year, along with the perennial “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” we have the green boy who flies first-class, no security hassles, anytime he pleases — “Peter Pan,” by way of Marc Robin’s compact and crisply acted 70-minute musical version.

Here’s what the show is not. It is not J.M. Barrie’s century-old play, or his subsequent novelization. It is not the 1954 Broadway musical, which played down the psychosexual repression in favor of snappy show tunes. Thanks to the miracle of early television, the Mary Martin version of the musical became a huge cultural phenom. (A generation later, Cathy Rigby made Martin’s flying look positively wimpy.)

Here’s what it is. It is public-domain material, which means new adaptations of “Peter Pan” come pretty frequently, with no royalties owed. Two years ago, Robin’s musical version opened at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire as part of its young-audiences program. Now, with a few tweaks and a far higher ceiling — no small matter when you’re dealing with the program credit that reads “Flying by Foy” — it’s on the pier.

Judging from a recent 11 a.m. crowd of mostly ypun’uns, it’s doing the jpb.Robin has cast the key roles well. Bucking tradition, Peter Pan here is a fellow, not a gamine. Matt Raftery is the actor. He is elfin without being obnoxious, full of musical-comedy vim without making the Lost Boys business seem like theater camp for outre teenagers.

Speaking of which: Ever since Cyril Ritchard did a riotously flouncy tarantella on TV as Capt. Hook, Pan’s nemesis typically has gone the camp route. If you happened to catch Alan Sues in the role at the Milwaukee Melody Top back in the ’70s, you know what I mean. Sues made Cyril Ritchard look like Charles Bronson. Timothy Gregory, not a hambone by nature, adds a welcome dash of subtlety to this “Peter Pan.”

As Smee, Don Forston proves you can be big and broad in your playing style without exhausting either the pre-teens or the post-teens. Cheryl Avery’s properly pip-pip as Mrs. Darling, and a formidable-looking Tiger Lily.

Robin’s adaptation takes care of the story in seven scenes and 10 songs. The songs, alas, are a pedestrian lot. The title character’s self-directed ode, “I am Peter Pan,” labors under some awfully crowded lyric lines (“I am Peter Pan/Peter Pan is me/Peter Pan perpetuates perpetuosity”), falling short of satisfying patter. “Forever Young” is nice, though. Musical director Alaric Jans does what he can to make a synth-dominated trio (Oh, cruel domination!) sound like fun.

The two best moments occur high above the stage.

When the nighttime sky cloaks the Darling kids’ flying rigs in darkness, the young actors really do appear to be flying. And, a while later, you can spy three of the rigs swinging to and fro, after a workout — visible reminders of stagecraft mechanics that, with luck, will never go out of style.

Speaking of which: Ever since Cyril Ritchard did a riotously flouncy tarantella on TV as Capt. Hook, Pan’s nemesis typically has gone the camp route. If you happened to catch Alan Sues in the role at the Milwaukee Melody Top back in the ’70s, you know what I mean. Sues made Cyril Ritchard look like Charles Bronson. Timothy Gregory, not a hambone by nature, adds a welcome dash of subtlety to this “Peter Pan.”

As Smee, Don Forston proves you can be big and broad in your playing style without exhausting either the pre-teens or the post-teens. Cheryl Avery’s properly pip-pip as Mrs. Darling, and a formidable-looking Tiger Lily.

Robin’s adaptation takes care of the story in seven scenes and 10 songs. The songs, alas, are a pedestrian lot. The title character’s self-directed ode, “I am Peter Pan,” labors under some awfully crowded lyric lines (“I am Peter Pan/Peter Pan is me/Peter Pan perpetuates perpetuosity”), falling short of satisfying patter. “Forever Young” is nice, though. Musical director Alaric Jans does what he can to make a synth-dominated trio (Oh, cruel domination!) sound like fun.

The two best moments occur high above the stage.

When the nighttime sky cloaks the Darling kids’ flying rigs in darkness, the young actors really do appear to be flying. And, a while later, you can spy three of the rigs swinging to and fro, after a workout — visible reminders of stagecraft mechanics that, with luck, will never go out of style.