There’s plenty to grin at in Stratford Festival’s Wendy and Peter Pan

Wendy and Peter Pan

AT THE AVON THEATRE IN STRATFORD, ONT.

Written by Ella Hickson Directed by Thomas Morgan Jones Starring Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks and Jake Runeckles

Never smile at a crocodile? Impossible in the case of Wendy and Peter Pan, this season’s show geared toward children at the Stratford Festival. The design team has put an aluminum jawsnapping reptilian frame around what looks like a recumbent bike, which actor Marcus Nance pedals around while delightfully cackling away in a top hat.

There’s plenty like that to grin at in Wendy and Peter Pan, the latest in a long string of adaptations of J.M. Barrie’s original play and stories about the boy who never grew up, though a little that is as likely to lead to grimaces – from grown-up critics anyway.

British playwright Ella Hickson’s script, which had its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014, puts a female-forward spin on the story that centres on Wendy Darling (Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks) – and it already feels a decade old in approach.

Hickson accentuates Edwardian gender stereotypes in order to subvert them, but I suspect some young’uns will end up being introduced only to dated tropes about girls and women as a result.

Did you know that ladies should have jobs if they want them, and even the vote? Or that a wife is more than a servant to iron your handkerchiefs?

A more compelling aspect of Hickson’s addition to the Peter pantheon is that the Darling children, briefly, have a fourth sibling, Tom (Chris Vergara). He has a few dramatic coughs in the children’s room, before being flown out the window by Peter Pan (Jake Runeckles).

Flash forward a year: Wendy, John (Noah Beemer) and Michael (Justin Eddy) are all trying to find happy thoughts again after the loss of Tom; so, too, are mom and dad Darling (Agnes Tong and Sean Arbuckle), who are now acting out a miniplay that crosses the parental plots in A Doll’s House and Mary Poppins.

So, when Peter Pan flies in again with mischievous fairy Tink (Nestor Lozano Jr., bringing a hint of the drag queen Angel he played in Rent last year to the role), Wendy is eager to follow the pair to Neverland after hearing about the Lost Boys – and wondering if her lost brother might be found among them.

Tom’s disappearance is never directly spoken of as a death. But there’s plenty of explicit talk of killing and murder, heads on pikes and skinning people over in Neverland, where Peter and the Lost Boys are in a never-ending playwar with the Pirates led by Captain Hook (Laura Condlln).

There is a lot of dramatic dying in Neverland, but none of it sticks for particularly long. (The show is recommended for children ages 8 and up.)

I thought Hickson’s exploration of how kids try (and fail) to grapple with the reality of death through play was quite honest and originally done. Peter, as played by Runeckles in a wig with a fuchsia streak, is truly boyish in the way she gets anxious and starts to fidget and fight whenever any emotional subject is broached; her gangly and not particularly charming portrayal of the character takes some getting used to but is fresh.

Wendy and Peter Pan’s dominant theme of grief cuts through what sometimes seems a noisy jumble of put-on accents and funny voices and frenetic fight-and-flight sequences in the production led by director Thomas Morgan Jones.

The deconstructed set by Robin Fisher, who also designed the costumes, is at its best depicting the pirates’ Jolly Roger, but it’s not all jolly even in moments where it might be – the dark colour palette and Arun Srinivasan’s dim lighting keeping the energy sombre at times when it could be more fun.

My favourite character, as the kids say, was Captain Hook, portrayed in complex fashion by Condlln. She is sometimes the necessary boo-able baddie, but at others has more depth. Her Hook seems jealous of Peter Pan’s eternal youthfulness – but is also clearly sick and tired of playing kids’ games. (Sara-Jeanne Hosie makes a fine panto sidekick as Smee.)

Played, as he is, by a female actor, Hook also seems to be offering genuine advice to Wendy when he says, “Why is it that Peter Pan never has to grow up – but you have to be Mother right from the get-go?”

Can Wendy, Tink and Tiger Lily (Tara Sky, in a rich secondary performance) put aside their differences and band together as the Lost Boys do to find her lost brother and save Peter? Does a crocodile that swallows a clock go ticktock?

I’ll note the length of the show – 2 hours 45 minutes, a fair bit longer than Barrie’s original play – but I won’t complain it is too long this year. My five-year-old was actually more attentive in the second act than the first and said he loved it all at the end, especially how the characters flew with “real live ropes.” Kids say the darnedest etc.

Wendy and Peter Pan runs to Oct. 27.

DAVID HOU/STRATFORD FESTIVAL Jake Runeckles as Peter Pan, left, and Laura Condlln as Hook spar in the Stratford Festival’s production of Wendy and Peter Pan.