Finding Peter Pan on Broadway (and beyond)

In my line of work, nearly any stage or movie production related to Peter Pan counts as research, including the stage version of Finding Neverland--although I had to wait a while for the national tour of the Broadway show to come through my town. 

It's a lovely work of fantasy--unfortunately, not only in its forays into the imagination of J. M. Barrie, but in its contorted biographical details. However, it's hard not to love a show that includes in its cast a real dog (Sammy, in the performance I saw).

Sammy (right) as Porthos,with understudy Bailey and animal
trainer Bill Berloni (KSP Images)

Those digressions from fact were particularly jarring in the first act. Luckily, the first act also contains most of the sets and ensemble numbers I enjoyed most. Theater critics disagree on the value of using projections rather than full sets, but I found them transporting and an agreeable contrast with the reality of the stage. Most of the magic for me in Finding Neverland was in those fantasy sequences, particularly "Believe" with its red balloons and a mermaid, and Sylvia Llewellyn-Davies' beautiful final scene.

Photo by Carol Rosegg

I didn't think Finding Neverland had quite as much heart as Peter and the Starcatcher, which surprised me. The fact that its songs are written by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy of boy band Take That is probably part of that. But the ensemble numbers were great fun, as were all the scenes featuring the full company, and the entire cast--many of whom have Peter Pan-related experience--was uniformly excellent.

Tony Award-nominated Tom Hewitt played Captain Hook in the Cathy Rigby Peter Pan (as well as the not dissimilar roles of Frank N'Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, the title role in Dracula: The Musical, and Scar in The Lion King). Kevin Kern understudied Glee's Matthew Morrison on Broadway, and brought a similar style to the role. Christine Dwyer, who also played Wicked's Elphaba on Broadway, is only the second actress to portray Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in the musical. Perhaps most impressive of all, the young actors who play the Llewelyn Davies boys are able to trade parts.

Of particular interest to this blog, of course, is the character of Captain Hook. Here he is more than a villain--he is the goad to Barrie's success, with a musical number and backup performers of his own.

Clearly the shirt designers were expecting me.

Most audience members won't be catapulted out of the story the way I was by its digressions from fact. I won't poke too many holes in the narrative here--the details are easy to look up--but I will say that J. M. Barrie was never anything but commercially successful as a playwright, and New York producer George Frohman didn't come into the picture until "Peter Pan" was already a London hit. (Frohman is a colorful character in the musical, though, and a useful foil.) I also felt for J. M. Barrie's wife Mary, given that Jim was at least as much at fault for the breakup of their actual marriage as she was. Most galling, though, is the deletion of the youngest Llewelyn-Davies boy, Nicholas (which I attempt to redress in The Stowaway, in my own small way).

Of course, the musical is based on the 2004 "semibiographical" film starring Johnny Depp, which was no more accurate, and as such can't make too many changes and still resemble its source material. Finding Neverland began life as a 1998 play, The Man Who Was Peter Pan, by Allan  Knee, who adapted it for the 2004 film starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. The musical version was proposed by La Jolla Playhouse in 2011, but had its world premiere in Leicester in 2012. Its official world premiere took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2014, and the Broadway production began in 2015.Changes--some substantial--were made to the production all along its trajectory--perhaps appropriate, as J. M. Barrie made innumerable tweaks to his own production of Peter Pan.

A fun note: Sandy Duncan, who played Peter Pan on Broadway in 1979, played the role of Mrs. DuMaurier in the Broadway production of Finding Neverland for a month. 

A Captain Hook Christmas (continued)

Three years ago, when I wrote about my Captain Hook Christmas, I didn't know all that much about Captain Hook nutcrackers. In fact, I didn't realize how much there was still to learn until I visited the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington.

I was hoping the museum might have a Steinbach Captain Hook from 1991, now retired and hard to find. And it does, along with two other characters from Peter Pan. And the display also contains two other Captain Hook nutcrackers from other manufacturers. (Of course, there may be others that I missed--the museum has thousands of nutcrackers, from historical to current versions.)

A rather better pic than I was able to get.

These figures are from the Christian Ulbricht Peter Pan character set, a Walt Disney licensed edition from possibly 1991. I can find very little information on this collection, which is the opposite of my usual ventures into research. Jolly fellow, this particular Jas. Hook.

And here's a Hook from closer to my Seattle home, made by Mcdowell's Enchanted Woodworks in British Columbia, Canada.

I noticed that only the Steinbach version has the hook on the correct hand, as described by author J. M. Barrie. The others are evidently based on the inescapable Walt Disney Studios animated Peter Pan.

Once again, I find that Peter Pan lurks everywhere, even in small Bavarian-styled towns in the Cascade mountains. As, it seems, do blog posts.

The adventure continues

Three and a half years and 117 posts ago, this blog was born. It's now reached and passed 50,000 hits. This seems like a good time to look back at what I've found particularly interesting during my research for The Stowaway.

The five most popular posts are listed there at the right side of the page. I had no idea Mr. Smee was so popular before I started Hook's Waltz. But here are another five, with links, that I think deserve a little love as well.

By Mabel Lucie Atwell, 1921

Keeping faith
There are certain challenges of being true to a character who has been portrayed as many ways through the years as Peter has.

~ ~ ~

By Anne Graham Johnstone, 1988

Why they flew away
Why was it so easy for Peter Pan to convince the Darling children to join him in Neverland? The answer is less sinister than you might think. 

~ ~ ~

Return to Neverland Happy Meal toys.
2002?

Peter and the popular media
Movie tie-in toys have been around longer than McDonald's has.

(I wish now I had never gone searching for images of vintage Peter Pan toys. I guess there's a little more room in the display cabinet.)

~ ~ ~

Writer Maurice Hewlett. Not only did J. M
Barrie recruit him for his struggling cricke
team, he borrowed his son's name for one
of the pirates in Peter Pan.

Friends in unexpected places
James Matthew Barrie had no problem writing his friends into his stories, even if dreadful things happened to the characters.

Bonus: He also had no problem pressing them into service on perhaps the worst amateur cricket
team in history.
Sports and letters

Additional bonus:
The cricket rivalry has been resurrected!
A new sports rivalry between Authors and Actors 

~ ~ ~

By Marjorie Torrey, 1957

Of kisses and lost children 
And finally, my most personal take on the story of Peter Pan, with its expression of the indelible mark left by the death of a child.

Down to the sea in ships (and wooden boats)

Every summer since starting The Stowaway, I've made a point of sailing at least once on the brig Lady Washington and seeing as many other ships as I can. But this year I not only missed the Wooden Boat Festival at Seattle's Lake Union, I was perilously close to missing a sail on the Lady as well. Luckily, the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was a chance to remedy both.

A day that broke cool and cloudy turned blue and bright by midday. Fortunately, a boat festival is an easy place to buy a hat.

.

The festival is a showcase for over a hundred boats, large and small, motored and paddled and sailed.

And there she was--the Lady Washington.

 A perfect place from which to watch the parade of sail that ends the last day of the festival, and a chance to remind myself of those small sensory details of being aboard a ship that are part of Vivian Drew's story. (Of course, a fully-booked sail is not quiet, and not the place to hear the wind in the rigging. Cannon ball "booms" are another story.)

Our pirate nemesis! Luckily, she was not very large.

And so the summer's boat quest ended successfully, with not only a fun experience but with a few nautical observations I should have probably made before. There really is nothing like first-hand research if one can manage it.

Or you could not.

All I have to say about Talk Like a Pirate Day is this.

It's Robert Newton's fault.

I suppose that might be quite a bit.

Peter Pan and Patsy Stone

Patsy Stone and Edina Monsoon--leads of the new Absolutely Fabulous movie--may be monstrous (although I find them less so in their current incarnation). But my uncomfortable admiration of Patsy may be possible because I know actress Joanna Lumley is not only an activist for causes in the areas of human rights and animal welfare, but has also been instrumental in saving the house and garden where a young J. M. Barrie first dreamed of Peter Pan.

Barrie attended Dumfries Academy for five years, and played with the two boys who lived in the adjacent Moat Brae estate. From these games came the first inklings of the characters and plot of Peter and Wendy.

… when shades of night began to fall, certain young mathematicians shed their triangles, crept up walls and down trees, and became pirates in a sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan. For our escapades in a certain Dumfries Garden, which is enchanted land to me, were certainly the genesis of that nefarious work, Peter Pan.” -- J. M. Barrie, 1924, upon being awarded the Freedom of the Burgh of Dumfries

The house was built in 1823, eventually converted to a private hospital and nursing home, abandoned by the 1990s and slated for demolition. But in 2007, the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust was created to restore the house and gardens and convert the estate to Scotland's first National Centre for Children's Literature and Storytelling--an educational and cultural center for both local schools and anyone who loves the works of J. M. Barrie.

Dumfries is an economically challenged area, and the site was to be used for affordable housing. But the center does not abandon the goal of helping the town. It will bring tourist trade, jobs, and volunteer opportunities to Dumfries, along with skills development and literacy education.

The Discovery Garden will have a Neverland theme.

Lumley is patron of the trust, and in 2011 she launched the fundraiser which has raised £5.3 of its £5.8 target. Moat Brae will host artists in residence and hold ongoing workshops and artists in residence--programs which have already begun, even though the entire project won't be complete until 2018. One such event was an morning family presentation in March 2016 with Lumley and comedian David Walliams, who is not only popular for his work with comic Matt Lucas, but for the five children's books he's written, which have sold well over two million copies.

Another presentation was a 2015 production of scenes from Barrie's very first play, Bandelero the Bandit, which he wrote at the age of 17, and which had unexpected success when a local clergyman declared it immoral. Barrie thought the play lost, but a copy of the script was found in the U.S., and a full production will eventually be staged at Moat Brae.

Naturally, Christine de Poortere, keeper of the Peter Pan archives at Great Ormond Street Hospital, has visited Moat Brae, where she met with the children from a local school.

And a picture book--Sixteen String Jack and the Garden of Adventure--was published in 2015 about Moat Brae House and J. M. Barrie's adventures there. (When my copy arrives, you can read about it here.) It's written by Tom Pow and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Ian Andrew, and is available (along with other books about Moat Brae and J. M. Barrie) at the impressive Moat Brae website.

Progress report

I'm interrupting the usual focus of this blog for a progress report. Hook's Waltz is, after all, a blog in the service of a book, a book which has been long in its creation, and it seems appropriate to take note of its evolution as I move into (what I hope is) the final stretch.

It's an entire book now, albeit one which is not in its final form. I squeezed fifty-odd pages of notes into fifteen, at least of half of which I hope to find a place for in the final draft. (As bad as that sounds, the original "notes" document was a staggering 115 pages.) And there still a couple of spots with blue lettering--so I can't miss it--saying things like "Insert accurate nautical terminology here!" The historical aspects of The Stowaway mean that I can never learn too much.

I'm reading the manuscript out loud (to the delight or chagrin, I'm not sure which) of the feral foster cat who is my audience. I've read that writing fiction on a computer short-circuits some of the processes that handwriting facilitates. I don't know the truth of that, but I do know that repetitive stress injuries and bad handwriting (I blame grad school, because it was fine before that) mean that I will never write a book long-hand. But reading aloud seems like it may accomplish some of the same aims.

It's my preferred method of finding words I overuse (ahem), sentences that don't flow, bits that don't fit with other bits. This method is harder and creates more work than the other revisions I've done, and I can't say it's my favorite part of writing. I do, however, appreciate the results.

Before I can call The Stowaway a finished work, I want to make sure I have enough understanding celestial navigation to be able to write Vivian Drew's experience of learning it. Trigonometry was the only math class I ever enjoyed, but that was long enough ago that its tenets are no longer at my ready retrieval. I've learned how to read a sextant, but there's far more to the art and science of navigation than that.

I am also immersing myself in relevant works so that I'm living the narrative as much as I can while I complete the manuscript.

I will also make time for DVD watching, so images of faraway places are clear in my mind. (Maybe Robert Newton's Long John Silver isn't so good for research. But it was a lucky thrift-store find, and does fit with the general immersion theme.)

My beta readers are ready. I have a background in non-profit grant-writing that I plan to turn towards synopsis and query letters.

And then I run up the sail and strike out for distant shores.