Some reviews simply demand to begin
with the words “What on earth possessed…?” One can certainly see the
attractions for Spanish production company Theatre Properties of
turning J.M. Barrie’s classic into a musical, but the reasoning behind
importing it in its original manifestation into the West End (even for
a bare month) is a puzzler.
Peter Pan
is many children’s first experience of theatre: how much of its magic
dust is going to be sprinkled on them when they find they have to read
surtitles to follow the action… if, that is, they’ve yet learnt to
read? Let alone to decipher these surtitles: occasional slips of
translation combined with poor programming, phrasing and all but
non-existent punctuation to leave me alternately gnashing my teeth in
impatience for minutes at a time and boggling in incomprehension at
captions such as “There’s no badnes [
sic]
that can win a tree”. Director Cristina Fargas is also badly hampered
by her own lighting design, which is far too fond of atmospheric
shadows, such that it is several minutes before we see Capitán
Garfio (Hook)’s face beneath his hat.
Oh, but what a performance from Miguel Angel Garnero as the Captain!
His eyes (when visible) burn, and in song he hits a number of sustained
high notes reminiscent of no stage performer so much as Rob
Halford of heavy metal band Judas Priest. The score as a whole is
written in a genre rare for stage musicals in Britain: I have to admit
that, despite my poor knowledge of the language, Hispanophone MoR rock
has for some time been one of my guilty pleasures. Nevertheless, I did
find it a bit much that instead of clapping our hands if we believed in
fairies, we were exhorted by Miguel Antelo’s Peter to get to our feet
and sing along with a power ballad in both English and Spanish.
It is extremely tempting to portray this as a so-bad-it’s good stinker
of the kind from which the West End has been strangely free for a few
years. In fact, little of the production is dire in itself, but the
whole affair is enmeshed in infelicities of transfer: neither the
adaptation nor the production has travelled at all well.
Written for the Financial
Times.