The Peter Pan Cometh, Clevername Theatre. Photo supplied.
The Peter Pan Cometh (Stage 4, Fine Arts Walterdale Theatre)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
It seems to be the particular, and way-off-centre, genius of Minnesota’s Clevername Theatre to re-imagine dark and weighty American theatre hits with characters from childhood classics. Last summer they surprised us with Who’s Afraid of Winnie The Pooh?, in which playwright Alexander Gerchak’s version of the Edward Albee marital scorcher was populated by the beloved A.A. Milne characters from the Hundred Acre Wood. And, no joke, the play shed light on both.
This time the aimless characters slumped over bar tables, passed out, at the outset of The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill’s relentlessly grim epic-sized 1946 drama of delusion and hope, are … Captain Hook (Thomas Buan), Smee ( Alec Berchem) and Tinkerbell (Isabelle Hopewell) from the great high-flying J.M. Barrie fantasy adventure Peter Pan. Look what they’ve come to, these denizens of Neverland, narcotized by pixie dust, pipe dreams and denial, waiting for their bender buddy Peter Pan to show up for his annual ‘spring-cleaning’ visit.
Match-making The Iceman Cometh and Peter Pan seems even more improbable, on paper. But what makes the play more than just an exercise in extreme ingenuity is the way Gerchak’s play susses out the surprising parallels, en route to the heart of the matter: growing up has big downsides.
Like Hickey, the fast-talking travelling salesman in O’Neill, the much-awaited Peter Pan (Nick Hill) flies in to this “boneyard of dreams, of what-could-have-beens,” jaunty on his rollerskates, all suited up, a boater on his head. Instead of party-time, he’s “off the dust, forever. I don’t need it no more.”
He’s arrived, as he says, to explode their self-deceptions, to “save y’all from your dreams,” The boy who wouldn’t grow up has grown up. “All you got to do is grow up too.” And that means taking responsibility for their darkest secrets: what happened to the lost boys, and Captain Hook’s crew? Where’s Wendy? And isn’t that an uneasy look on Peter’s face?
The Ice Man Cometh has kind of long, relentless, repetitive inertia about it, part of the point of its monologues. Taking its cue (in a mere 60 minutes), The Peter Pan Cometh is clever though not quite satisfying. It does capture, and darken, the wistfulness that always seems to attach to Peter Pan. Don’t you always feel a bit sad at the end of Peter Pan?
But this play doesn’t entirely take on a life of its own, though; it’s more a ‘where are they now?’ type sequel. The idea, in itself, is intriguing, though, and performances are apt. As a listless post-nihilist Hook in Gerchak’s production, Buan has a rusty authority as he unravels in this “boneyard of dreams, of what-could-have-beens.” The crackling, energized Peter played by Hill in a fine (and welcome) performance, can barely get a spark from him. Berchem is just right as the ever-hopeful Smee, clinging to the life-raft of his hope — when the wind is “just right,” they will right the sunken Jolly Roger. Dream on.
