This may sound like an odd request, but i was wondering if anyone could help me. i was thinking about peter pan tonight (dont ask why) and remembered a beautiful production i had seen at the oxford playhouse in 2004 and gopogled it, found out it was by Sarah Travis & John Doyle, now of tonys & watermill fame was wondering if anyone had any other info on it, or even some sneeky sneeky clips as far as i remember it was beautifully staged, and the songs beautiful (tho was only 14 so it could have been a pile of ____) any help would be much appreciated x
Your memory is correct. The production was enchanting with a wonderful design (characters emerging from a giant chest of drawers), and Sara Travis's music was delightful. It ran from 3 December 2004 until 16 January 2005. It certainly deserves a revival, and any enterprising theatre manager should check it out for a future Christmas show.
There were official photos (and the ubiquitous house video) taken at the time, but none are on the web as far as I know.
The rest of the cast (see below) was Jon Trenchard (Nana/Smee), Simon Tuck (Bill Jukes), Emma Correlle (Cookson), Michelle Long (Lisa/Tiger Lily), Adam Stone (Cecco) and Jez Unwin (Starkey). All Doyle/Travis/Watermill stalwarts.
Charles Spencer reviews Peter Pan at the Oxford Playhouse ('Telegraph' 13 December 2004)
They breed their children tough in Oxford. The matinee performance of Peter Pan was packed with apparently sweet and well-mannered primary schoolchildren, but when the going got rough they revealed the morals of the Marquis de Sade.
"Shall I shoot the boy?" Captain Hook leeringly asked the juvenile audience. "Yeah, shoot him!" screamed back my neighbours. And when Tinkerbell was in mortal peril, and we were asked to clap our hands if we believed in fairies, they screamed back that actually, no, all things considered, they didn't believe in fairies AT ALL. This of course was the response from the boys.
The girls, made of more tender stuff, mercifully ensured the show didn't turn into a bloodbath. But what struck me most about John Doyle's production was that except when encouraged to join in, almost all the children were clearly transported by it. At key moments you could hear a pin drop which, believe me, is exceptionally rare at schools' matinees.
Doyle, best known for his groundbreaking musicals using actor-musicians (his brilliant Sweeney Todd is currently playing at the New Ambassadors), captures not only the wonder but the strangeness of Peter Pan in his own adaptation of J M Barrie. The whole show has a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere, never entirely leaving the nursery, and with the strong suggestion that the adventures in Neverland are an imaginative response to the Darling family's everyday lives. One of the children has just seen a crocodile in a Punch and Judy show at Kensington Gardens, for instance. The Wendy House turns out to be a clotheshorse drying sheets and towels, while the rowing boat on the lagoon is the family bath.
The story seems to be emerging from the children's own heads in those magical moments balanced between sleep and waking. Tiger Lily is the family maid, Nana the dog (shame she's got a horrid plastic head) becomes Smee and naturally the children's unreliable father becomes Captain Hook.
Sarah Travis provides music which ranges from the haunting to the riotous, and as always in Doyle's shows the actors double as the band. It's not every day that you see Captain Hook playing the accordion, or Nana blowing a penny whistle, and there are some smashing songs. The imaginative design, by Liz Cooke, memorably combines the humdrum and the magical.
It doesn't all work. The narrative sometimes seems to drift, the mermaids have gone awol, and I could have done with far more exciting fight sequences. The flying is a bit clumsy too, with too many visible wires, and what on earth has happened to Tinkerbell's light? Having Mrs Darling (a rather stiff Helen Anderson-Lee) ringing a little handbell to signal the fairy's presence is nothing like as magical.
Justine Koos, however, is a tough, touslehaired Peter, Joanna Hickman a sweet Wendy, and Simon Walter doubles splendidly as Mr Darling and Captain Hook, a ginger, furtive, ferrety cove with a glassy smile who turns into a nightmare figure in his children's dreams. The moment when Hook tenderly asks his victims whether they would like to stroke his hair before he dispatches them to the deep seems to encapsulate everything that is strange and creepy in Barrie's beloved but disconcerting masterpiece.
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