Captain Hook (Jody Haucke) unrips his plan as Smee (Tyler McClure) listens in.
“I come every night to listen to the stories,” Peter explains to Wendy when she catches him in the Darling family nursery at the beginning of Peter Pan.
In Sock ’n’ Buskin Theatre Company’s austere retelling of J.M. Barrie’s children’s classic, which opened January 21 at the Kailash Mital Theatre at Carleton University, audiences must simply “think of a wonderful thing” to be swept into the tale.
It's true the sets are sometimes patchy and take a while to change, and hasty stitches on some costumes are visible, but this frees audience members to do something other than merely observe. It lets them use their own imagination, maybe fuelled by memories of their own bedtime stories, to build the fantasy world of Never Land for themselves
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Peter Pan
Starring Jody Haucke, Ashley Robinson |
Of course, that warm dream shivers with a little fear. Captain Hook and his pirates rock the boat from the moment they barrel through the audience singing “Yo Ho.” Hook, played by Jody Haucke (who is also Mr. Darling) grounds the play with a solid performance and a booming voice, while at the same time propelling it forward with humour and energy.
Peter Pan (Ashley Robinson) and the Lost Boys are loveable troublemakers. In the dinner scene where Wendy (Amber Melhado) tries to instil some manners into her "children," they capture all the seriousness and enthusiasm of children playing make-believe in the backyard tree-fort. They just cannot wait for their new “Mother” to finish telling them the story of Cinderella.
And that is, really, what we are all coming for. To soar along when Peter teaches the children how to fly, to cringe when we hear the tick-tock of the bloodthirsty crocodile, to giggle at Smee, the silliest of pirates.
As Peter says to Wendy, “you just need some happy thoughts and you’ll be flying too.”
Runs January 21 to 24 and 28 to 30, 2010