Peter Pan - Keller Auditorium

Peter Pan - A New Musical
BwayAmerica

We went to see this at Keller Auditorium last week. The show was okay, my wife enjoyed it. Didn't do much for me, did remind me of the animated Disney version of the story, which I liked much better than this show. In my book it was the best Peter Pan story ever. Yes, I won't grow up.

Someone gave a very annoying introduction, yammering on about American Indians. Typical Portland bullshit, wearing their heart on their sleeves, expressing sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, but not doing anything that would actually change the situation. Kind of like what they've been doing for / to the Palestinians for the last hunnert years as that would be uncomfortable. Morons.

They had a black girl playing Wendy and that grated on me. Yes, there have been numerous incidences of blacks being assimilated into English society, but this was a very fine fantasy just as it was, and now you've dropped this very jarring note in the middle of it. For someone who hasn't heard the story before, that might be okay, but I have seen it and having a black girl in there pretty much spoiled it. Okay, it was a Broadway musical and I mostly don't care for them anyway, so maybe it's just something for this old reactionary to complain about. But you know, if you want to put Africans on stage, maybe you ought to be staging African stories.

The sound was decent this time - no over-driving the speakers - and I could actually understand about half the words, which was pretty good for me. The flying was done with wires and there was some careful choreography there with people flying in front of others. The bit with Peter's shadow was also impressive. I couldn't quite figure out how it was being done. There must have been lights in front, back and high and low. Somebody put some effort into staging this.

Wikipedia: Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, often known simply as Peter Pan, is a work by J. M. Barrie, in the form of a 1904 play . . .