Ever Never Land

Peter Pan is an other world to cherish

by Jeffrey Gantz

PETER PAN, A musical production of the play by James Barrie. Original Broadway production conceived, directed, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Music by Moose Charlap. Additional lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green. Additional music by Jule Styne. Directed by Glenn Casale. Set design by John Iacovelli. Costumes by Shigeru Yaji. Lighting by Martin Aronstein. With Cathy Rigby, Paul Schoeffler, Barbara McCulloh, Elisa Sagardia, Michael LaVolpe, Drake English, Buck Mason, Susan Lamontagne, Michael Nostrand, and Aileen Quinn. At the Colonial Theatre through March 1.

What makes the English so special, as witness the first act of the Cathy Rigby Peter Pan now at the Colonial, is that they're so good at being English. The red-brick housefronts and garret windows and sooty skies of John Iacovelli's drop curtain conjure cozy Dickens. The Darling nursery is a world unto itself: you step down (à la Bleak House) the pink-and-lavender stair into a huge room with a fireplace and every Victorian alcove, sconce, and wall ornament imaginable (the pictures run to Arthur Rackham and Kate Greenaway). There's even a doghouse for St. Bernard nursemaid Nana, complete with blue-and-white-striped wallpaper and its own hearth. You wonder why the children would ever want to leave. But it's open at the top, so we -- and they -- can see the stars, James Barrie's metaphor for that other world of the imagination, a world indispensable to any child. Or adult.

For all that it made a feel-good musical out of Barrie's unsettling play/novel about little boys who feel abandoned by their parents -- especially their mothers -- and never quite grow up, Jerome Robbins's Peter Pan cuts closer to the bone than most Broadway shows. Beautiful and comforting as it is, the Darling children's nursery divides them from their parents; they love Nana, but what they really want is Mum and Dad. It's that upper-class English practice of substituting a nursemaid that gives rise to the Lost Boys' stated fear that their mothers wouldn't notice if they fell out of their prams -- and perhaps their unstated fear that their fathers don't want them to grow up. Besides, we all need to live in that world of the imagination, "where dreams are born, and time is never planned," as much, and as long, as possible -- something no one has understood as well as the writers of English children's books. No, you can't stay there, but you can keep going back.

The director of the current touring production, Glenn Casale, shows he understands what's at stake here by adhering to the usual double casting: Paul Schoeffler plays Mr. Darling and Captain Hook (okay, it's an Oedipal touch), and Barbara McCulloh is both Mrs. Darling and the grown-up Wendy. Casale even has Susan Lamontagne do double duty as Darling parlormaid Liza and Indian princess Tiger Lily -- the point being that the Never Land isn't just a fantasy world but a reworking of the children's real life. And he's got an outstanding cast. Schoeffler is stern but sympathetic as Mr. Darling and, well, pretty much the same as Hook (which is not to say that Schoeffler is limited as an actor -- just the opposite: he gets the joke). McCulloh's Mrs. Darling is smart and sweet enough to make you question the children's doubts. And Buck Mason's Nana (he doubles as the Crocodile) is so delectably doggy, the children in the audience are apt to want to take him home.

But any Peter Pan flies or falls on its Peter. Former gymnast (and world gold-medal winner) Cathy Rigby has been doing this role since 1990; she sings and acts like an authentic Broadway trouper, and she flies like a world-champion gymnast. Give her a B for not being Mary Martin (who starred in the musical's 1954 Broadway debut, opposite Cyril Ritchard), an A for everything else. The pirates are uproarious in their habanera and tarantella -- indeed, the musical numbers are uniformly entertaining. My only cavil is that they overwhelm the drama between Peter, who wants a mother, and Wendy, who wants a husband. Even as a musical, Peter Pan has the potential to be more thought-provoking, and thus moving, than it is. But at the Colonial, Cathy Rigby still flies high.