Writer: Ella Hickson
Director: Jonathan Munby
The RSC’s take on J. M. Barrie’s childhood favourite and first seen in Stratford in 2013 is an early Christmas present from the Barbican. Full of swashbuckling action and plenty of fairy dust, Wendy & Peter Pan is nevertheless quite long for a children’s entertainment, stretching near to the three-hour mark. Still, there is much to enjoy in how writer Ella Hickson foregrounds Wendy’s story to make her the real hero of the piece.
While most of Hickson’s text follows Barrie’s original narrative, she introduces a new brother for Wendy in addition to Henry and Michael. However, new sibling Tom dies within the first minutes of the show. His death, very tastefully presented, gives Wendy a reason to go to Neverland with Peter Pan. She believes that she will find Tom playing with the other Lost Boys on the island.
Although this mission gives Wendy more agency, it also runs the risk of making her seem a little wet. While her brothers and the other boys are playing games or eating worms and custard, she is always pestering them to search for Tom. You can’t help but agree with Charlotte Mills’ marvellously stroppy Tink that Wendy is too whiny. Fortunately, in the second half of the play, having been betrayed by Peter, she shows more mettle in refusing to be the Lost Boys’ mother, a role that demands she cooks and cleans for them.
As well as subverting ideas around girlhood and womanhood, Hickson also has fun with the concept of masculinity. Elder brother John (Fred Woodley Evans) may not learn anything by the end of the play, but Michael is a wonderful creation in the hands of Kwaku Mills, who gives the character a softer masculinity; he likes fighting, but also likes mermaids and taffeta. Scott Karim, as Smee, Captain Hook’s right-hand man in this production, is wonderfully camp in the way he struts around the stage. He also has a masochistic passion for Hook, just like Smithers has for Mr Burns in The Simpsons.
Peter himself is not the sweet, mischievous boy of old. Instead, he’s a lad, perhaps further along in years than is normally portrayed. Swaggering and hedonistic, he’s not a pleasant character, especially when he decides to leave Wendy for the pirates so he can continue his lifelong feud with Hook. Daniel Krikler oozes physicality as he limbers around the stage, but Peter is a man-child who won’t grow up in every sense.
It’s a shame that Wendy is so strait-laced, despite Hannah Saxby’s concerted efforts to give her some spirited determination in her fights with the pirates and arguments with Hook (a tremendous Toby Stephens). As yet another sword fight commences, you’ll wish that Wendy could bring the story to a speedier end. In many instances, director Jonathan Munby’s show seems to tread water much like the crocodile that waits by the ship for Hook’s other hand.
Christopher Shutt’s vaulted set design feels right at home on the Barbican stage; it truly fits like a glove. The flying is masterfully yet simply done, and there are enough jokes to keep an audience amused. But with a finish time that approaches 10pm, Wendy & Peter Pan may be difficult to plan for a school night.
Runs until 22 November 2025
