Graham Conway and Fiona Sauder in Peter Pan.Nicholas Porteous/The Globe and Mail
I have J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan to thank for my childhood aspiration to be a pirate captain. That dream didn't, ahem, pan out, but I figure being a theatre critic was a decent compromise. Still, the six-year-old inside of me continues to feel a twinge of longing whenever he sees that mustachioed, sword-brandishing dandy with an iron hook for a hand.
I felt the twinge again watching Bad Hats Theatre's spunky little Peter Pan adaptation, a 2016 hit now playing as part of this year's Soulpepper Family Festival. This is a show both for actual kids – who get to sit on the stage near the thick of the action, lucky tykes – and for those of us who keep our urge for make believe close to the surface. I dare you to watch it and not want to leap up and join in, just like the enthusiastic little boy on opening night who, by the end, had wandered innocently into a tender final scene, threatening to pull focus from Fiona Sauder's Peter.
Blame his inadvertent scene-stealing on the enticement of Severn Thompson's Dora Award-winning production, in which the 11 youthful members of the fledgling Bad Hats troupe come off like a bunch of big kids at play. Their makeshift props include a toy pirate ship, a toy piano, wooden swords and a steamer trunk that serves as everything from a cozy bed to a hungry crocodile's jaws. Then there's the fairy, Tinkerbell, who is embodied simultaneously by a glitter-covered tennis ball, zooming back and forth across the stage, and the glitter-gowned actress Reanne Spitzer, who speaks a fairy language that sounds not a little like the gibberish of the Minions from the Despicable Me films.
That's one of the few times the show begs a contemporary comparison. The other is when maternal Wendy Darling (Lena Maripuu) turns out to be a skilled swordfighter, recalling that girl-empowering Pan "prequel," Peter and the Starcatcher. Otherwise, adapters Sauder and Spitzer stick close to Barrie's original play-turned-novel, with a narrator (Matt Pilipiak) reading bits from the book. In the interests of a 75-minute running time, they do cut some scenes and characters; the episodes involving the native princess Tiger Lily and her tribe are, thankfully, consigned to the offensive stereotype bin, but I did miss the presence of Nana, the Darling children's canine nanny – a lost opportunity for an actor to play a dog.
But my fiendish hero, Captain Hook, gets his due, played with flair (and just a pinch of panto) by Graham Conway. Pilipiak's milquetoast narrator is suitably recruited to double as Hook's gentle sidekick Smee, while the Lost Boys of Neverland (Jocelyn Adema, Matthew Finlan, Richard Lam and Tal Shulman) resourcefully transform themselves into the pirates with the simple addition of an eye patch and a snarl.
Sauder follows in the long tradition of female Peter Pans, from Nina Boucicault (in the original 1904 production) to Allison Williams (in the 2014 live telecast). She gives us a sturdy, masculine Pan, a pubescent boy, credibly stirring the romantic feelings of Maripuu's mature Wendy. Children be warned: Things do get mushy – but you can always avert (or roll) your eyes.
Most of the time, though, the tone is one of slapstick silliness and high spirits, raised further by the addition of several lively songs, written by Landon Doak (who also plays Michael Darling) and performed by the company on piano and strings. The music ranges from gospel to jazz to folk, with the most inspired number turning one of Barrie's own lyrics for Wendy into a catchy doo-wop ballad. Otherwise, the tunes are unmemorable but they do the job.
This Peter Pan made its debut touring a string of Toronto breweries last December, subsequently winning three Doras in the kids' theatre division. I didn't see it in its previous beery environs, but it fits comfortably – and perhaps more appropriately – in Soulpepper's 200-seat Michael Young Theatre, where it plays in the round.
The adult in you may leave the performance grumbling once again about the Victorian Barrie's sentimental glorification of motherhood and his reinforcement of traditional gender roles. But Peter Pan ultimately speaks to the child in us and its real celebration is of the joy of unfettered imagination – something this version captures splendidly.
Peter Pan continues to Dec. 31 (soulpepper.ca)