Not quite finding Neverland

“You need to let your pirate out” says Captain Hook, advising James Barrie to reduce the glucose content in his story and allow its darker elements to triumph. The writers could have taken the same advice in their construction of Finding Neverland “The New Musical Comedy”.   Whilst the second act is touching and moving once Barrie gets Peter Pan off the ground, so to speak, the first is sluggish and unfocused and does no service to historical accuracy.

Barrie was undeniably homosexual, and maintained a dubious interest in small boys which might have got him into trouble had it not been for the disbelieving morality of the day.  His fascination with the Llewellyn-Davies brothers parallels Lewis Carroll’s infatuation with Alice Liddell and her sisters and will shortly be explored by Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw when, in John Logan’s new play Peter and Alice those two characters meet in later life.

Finding Neverland presents Barrie as a shy romantic whose affections are captured by widowed mother, Sylvia, with whom he eventually falls in love, whilst developing a healthy outdoor friendship with her four sons on whom he tests his tales of piracy and derring-do.   This is wayward, because the boys’ father Arthur didn’t die until three years after Peter Pan opened and when mother later succumbed to cancer, “Uncle Jim” Barrie interfered with a version of her Will to have himself nominated as the person with whom the boys should live. 

Peter committed suicide, George died in battle on the Somme, Michael drowned at 20 in suspicious circumstances at Oxford, with his alleged male lover.  See what I mean, there’s an infinitely better and darker story here although possibly not for a musical. 

The sins of historical omission and commission are directly attributable to the movie, of course, but it feels more immediately ‘wrong’ in the theatre and by sticking to the sanitized made-for-middle-America Miramax treatment, the writers have constructed a show with more spoonfuls of sugar than Mary Poppins, which it too closely resembles.  Producer Harvey Weinstein’s argument would be that it makes it palatable to family audiences: that may be its fatal flaw in a post-Matilda world where children respond to more ambitious plotlines.

In Rob Ashford’s uneven production, it’s hard to define this as musical comedy, there are so many conflicting elements: Julian Ovenden and Rosalie Craig look handsome and sing beautifully at the centre of a slow burning married-boy-meets-widowed-girl romance, as does Clare Foster as the third wheel Mary Barrie.  They don’t seem to be in the same play as Oliver Boot’s camp Captain Hook who appears as Barrie’s alter ego and conscience, a structure which pales by comparison with The Carroll Myth, Nathan Shreeves' fine play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival last year and in which the characters from Alice invade the author’s mind. 

Hook is only a loveable rogue in recent animated movies and for pantomime purposes, 1904 audiences would have found him genuinely frightening.  Also batting for the panto team are the League Of Gentlemen cartooned as Barrie’s best mates, and Stuart Neal overacting as Barrie’s harassed stage manager.  The schoolboys sing brightly and act by numbers, although none of them is a potential Billy Elliot.  Which leaves Liz Robertson, as Sylvia’s disapproving mother, still with Madame Giry’s stick up her backside and delivering a one-woman Downton Abbey.

Despite the randomness of the characterisations, money has been flung at the production: Scott Pask’s sets are vast and impressively detailed, and Paul Willis’s costumes are elegant (although largely linen which wasn’t a fashion textile in 1904, being used mainly for handkerchiefs, shrouds and bedsheets), there’s a car which could do justice to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and a fully-rigged pirate ship afloat on a sea of dry ice to climax Act One. 

John Driscoll and Gemma Carrington’s projection designs are vividly coloured and convey a real sense of movement, but they’re not nearly as exciting as William Dudley’s 3D projections for Peter Pan in London.  I looked for a credit in the programme for the flying technology, but there isn’t one.  It’s so bad it could be two men on a rope at the side of the stage.

Michael Korie’s lyrics and Scott Frankel’s music don’t soar, except perhaps in a derivative anthem which accompanies the pirate voyage – in fact looking at the list of 27 numbers in the programme a day after seeing the show, it’s impossible to recall any of them with clarity.

This is a fully-finished production, not an out-of-town tryout, and having seen it ahead of the London critics it’s tempting to do as Walter Winchell’s secretary Rose – who saw Oklahoma! in preview in Connecticut – and cable home “no legs, no jokes, no chance”.   It has potential, but if it’s to be the show Weinstein says he intends to bring in to London to challenge Book of Mormon (although I’d have guessed they’d attract different audiences) it needs to lose fifteen minutes from the first act, and gain a couple of the sort of knockout production numbers for which Rob Ashford is famous.

Panned

If you’re the kind of sentimental old purist who remembers Mary Martin in the title role, and the words “second star to the right and straight on till morning” still bring a lump to your throat – this is not the Pan for you. This is a modern, popular-culture-on-steroids, musically throbbing show and light years’ flying distance from J M Barrie’s fireside story.

What it lacks in subtlety or adherence to the plot it makes up for with the energy of the ensemble performances led by a Priscilla-derived trio of Motown divas – Nadine Higgin, Donna Hines and Tasheka Coe who carry the singing load (presumably because the principals can’t) with stunning voices and punctuating the action with a series of punchy numbers and sparkly frocks until you’re not sure whether this is panto or promo for Destiny’s Child. They’re called the Pan-ettes, but assessing the carbohydrate load of one or two of them, Paninis might have been funnier.

David Hasselhoff isn’t Ian McKellen. But he isn’t rubbish either, tall enough to invite a sort of totemic admiration merely for being there he turns in a more than adequate performance as a nervously under-confident Hook who ultimately charms rather than frightens the little kiddies, and the knowing references to ‘Knight Rider’ and ‘Baywatch’ are very well-handled. He is not out of his depth.



In contrast, there is no pit of adjectival condemnation deep enough in which to drown Mr Louie Spence, who appears as Roger the Cabin Boy.

I had no previous exposure to the toxic radiation of this character, which I now consider to be the sort of lucky escape you’d have had to be weekending away from Chernobyl in April 1986 - but thanks to Wikipedia I understand he’s a ‘dance expert’ and that overused oxymoron ‘television personality’ whose reputation is fuelled by appearances in tabloid magazines and his own show on Sky 1.

It’s amazing what you can miss if you go out in the evenings.

His wriggling, arse-spreading, tit-flashing, hyperbolically vulgar camp performance is so revolting that it should come with a health warning ‘Not Suitable For Children’. Or Adults. The constant and undisguised references to his sexual appetite and capacity are so far removed from either the clever innuendo tradition of Pantomime where the lewd jokes go over the children’s heads – with Spence’s shockingly nasty aim they’d probably get it in the eye - or from the boundaries of taste and inappropriate stereotyping that you wonder what Wimbledon was thinking of in casting him. Perhaps he’s part of their outreach programme to employ someone with such a disabling speech impediment?


Mr Louie Spence courting tabloid publicity, copyright BigPictures/holymoly.com


On evenings when Mr Hasselhoff is unavailable, the role of Hook will be played by Jerry Springer. Let’s hope he gives Mr Spence the kind of feedback he gives to damaged personalities on his show.

In the rest of the cast, it’s worth praising Shane Knight who looks as if he may be Spence’s understudy but dances better, doubling Nana, a fey Pirate, an Indian and the excellent crocodile. Jaymz Denning leads the Pirate band with considerable charm, and dance captain Katherine Iles is engaging as Tiger Lily. Amy Bird is a rather too bland Wendy and Robert Rees, excellent in State Fair and Hobson’s Choice is not really given full rein in this production, and emerges as a somewhat grounded Peter. Nor are he and Bird allowed to sing until the final number which is a shame because they both have fine musical theatre voices.

There are ten sparkly sets, and the scene changes are slick enough to hold the young audience’s attention but sets, costumes and the Eric Potts script are thoroughly recycled, having done duty last year at Brighton Theatre Royal and previously at Woking and Bromley.

Wimbledon is lucky to have its enterprising theatre which delivers on so many levels, it’s unfortunate this glossy production is damaged by injudicious casting.


This review written for ThePublicReviews