Shropshire Events and Whats On Guide

Shropshire Events and Whats On Guide

Theatre Review : Peter Pan Goes Wrong

Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Dress RehearsalChris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’ which arrives at Birmingham Repertory on 27th January 2015 for one week.

The important thing when producing Peter Pan is to ensure that Wendy’s wires are attached to Wendy … and not just to her nightie. Otherwise…in the words of the famous World War Two warning to women…one ‘yank’ and its off.

She’s a game girl is Leonie Hill…cavorting around Neverland in her undies. But then the entire cast of this madness of mayhem deserve OBE’s for their services to slapstick – and cast-iron BUPA membership just in case. How none of them ended up in an ambulance is a tribute to their technical ability, immaculate acrobatic timing and sheer bravado. And it’s all so funny, I found myself shaking with laughter – unable to take notes.

Mischief Theatre Company had me in stitches earlier this year with ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’; a riotous send up of an amateur dramatic society trying to do a thinly disguised ‘Mousetrap’ which is still running in the West End. Their blatant tenant is that anything that can possibly go wrong, must go wrong as often as possible for the sole purpose of getting laughs. Act 1 was so littered with hilarious disasters that by the interval I was worried they’d shot all their bolts. Instead they just raised the calamity to another level. And in Peter Pan they fly even higher.

The company very professionally present themselves as a group of clueless, wrangling lovvies; the Cornley Polytechnic Amateur Dramatic Society. Buoyed by the apparent success of their previous, rather low-budget, Christmas Show ‘Jack and the Bean’, someone clearly thought it might be fun to have a go at flying. Oh, and a revolving stage might also be a good production idea! Needless to say, the flying has its serious ups and downs and the runaway stage disobeys the laws of physics.

The excellent actors milk all this well beyond the pail. James Marlowe is wonderfully deadpan as the hapless thesp who can never remember his lines. His director thoughtfully feeds his words into an earpiece…which is prone to picking up any passing radio signals from the Shipping Forecast to an SAS squat squad.

Bearded, balding Cornelius Booth is drafted in at short notice to play Michael Darling and then reappears as an unintelligible pirate locked in incomprehensible dialogue with his indecipherable parrot. And Naomi Sheldon is just wonderful, playing practically every other woman in the show…though the brainwave of wiring Tinkerbell to the mains to illuminate her dress needs re-thinking. This does however give rise to one of several touchingly intelligent uses of the genre. Only mass audience belief in fairies can save her from electric annihilation.

The actors do indulge in a great deal of gurning and needless to say the skateboarding crocodile steals the show. Matt Cavendish pirouettes perfectly in his recumbent posture whilst Laurence Pears gives a master class in just how big a nuisance it is to be lumbered with a Hook.

It’s all fabulously funny, pantingly pacey and too silly for words. But underneath the chaos, it’s an immaculately choreographed display of acrobatic acumen. It has to be… otherwise they’d never get the insurance. I take my top hat off to them all.

Visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk for information about Birmingham Rep.