Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.
By Sami DeSocio
When you hear the name Peter Pan, images of a young boy with a sword who flies through the night sky and into Neverland flash across one’s imagination. But with so many tellings of the story, it seems that every generation has their own version at this point. Since I’m in the process of getting my own, darker version off the ground in a new play I’m having mounted in April, I’m finding myself thinking more and more about the boy who won’t grow up.
Written by J.M Barrie in 1902, the story is told about Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up and stumbled into the lives of Wendy, John and Michael Darling one night when he followed his shadow through their nursery window. Peter takes them on a wild, unforgettable adventure to Neverland, where growing up was something to be scoffed at.
There are, of course a lot of actresses associated with playing the role: Mary Martin and Cathy Rigby to name a few. Their performances are iconic and their styles absolutely flawless as they are lifted into the air to embody the boy.
The role, onstage, is most often played by women for a few reasons. One, we are dynamically lighter to be able to fly so effortlessly attached to the wires required. And secondly, only a small, slender, adult woman could have the silhouette of a boy. Onscreen though, it is mostly played by boys or young men as far for the most part.
Of course, then Disney did its own cartoon version of it in 1953, introducing children to it in the only way Disney knew how-musically! Forever putting songs like “The Second Star to the Right”, and “Following the Leader” into childrens’ heads, even to today.
A few other live-action versions having taken place as well, the one most recent was the one produced in 2003 that swept audiences off its feet by telling it in a new, dazzling way!
My favorite telling though is the Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and Bob Hoskins version, Hook. In it, we see Peter as an adult with two children of his own, who traded his life in Neverland for the life of a father, marrying Wendy’s daughter and calling her “granny wendy”. He is challenged by Hook to come back when Hook sneaks into the nursery and kidnaps Peter’s children, forcing him to return to his childhood home of Neverland to retrieve them.
And where would Peter be without his wonderful author, J.M Barrie. Mr. Barrie got his own movie, explaining the origins of Peter Pan in Finding Neverland, a soon to be a musical on Broadway with Matthew Morrison playing the leading role.
Peter Pan will live on forever, in the hearts and minds of everyone who is ever told the story. He will also live forever at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. A children’s hospital, that was given sole rights to the story of Peter Pan upon Barrie’s death. Today, that hospital receives royalties every time Peter is put up -anywhere. Including the most recent production seen on NBC starring Christopher Walken as Captain Hook.
No matter what version of Peter Pan you know, we all know and love the boy who won’t grow up.