The Making of Peter Pan Live! — Page 2

Barrie's original concept was for Captain Hook to be played by a woman- specifically Dorothea Baird who was the first Mrs. Darling! Auggie describes perfectly Barrie's reason for wanting the villain to echo a parental figure.

For those seeking a good read, I highly recommend Bruce Hanson's THE PETER PAN CHRONICLES which explains the entire fascinating history of the piece.

Michael Bennett contributed exactly what my response was to be. Even the book recommendation. You can also visit www.jmbarrie.co.uk and read Barrie's notes which specifically mention the notion of having Mrs. Darling double as Hook.

With Smee, it implies that the children view their parent as the foppish boss-pleasing sidekick, which makes no sense. I expect that they did a little rewriting for PETER PAN LIVE to have it make more sense. I hope so.

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It looks great, the kids are cute, and I'm looking forward to Kelli O'Hara. Christopher Walken will pretty much play himself, and he can't really sing, but I love him anyway.

Oh, cool. I don't know much about the show, so I wasn't sure if he had a lot of numbers. He looks awesome with that wig though!

"Everything looks wonderful except the leading performance, but perhaps the special gave her too much non-Pan focus. She may be winning in the character; talking to us she had an annoying vocal fry adolescent sound that grates. I think NBC would've done her a favor by keeping the actor more under wraps, just letting us see glimpses of her interpretation. "

I watched with my mom, and she had the exact same reaction. She basically said "I'm tired of her--she probably will be fine in the show, but..." Seeing her in heavy makeup constantly talking to the camera was a mistake, IMHO (she also struck me so much like her character on Girls that I had a hard time taking her seriously--and I admit that's not fair.)