Everybody is in striped pyjamas, including the stage-hands, in Sally Cookson’s production of Peter Pan, which takes a highly original approach to a familiar story. Never Never Land is a rubbish-filled, graffiti-ridden children’s adventure playground. Captain Hook is played by Anna Francolini.
Interestingly, James Barrie had wanted Dorothy Baird to play Hook at the premiere in 1904. Had Baird done so (and not Gerald du Maurier), would the play have been so popular? Had its original subtitle, The Boy Who Hated Mothers, been used, would parents have continued to take their children every year?
Barrie disliked the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, saying it did not show the devil in Peter. What would Barrie have made of actor Paul Hilton’s Peter, an arrested grown-up (no little boy, he) in a bottle-green suit? The play is about growing up and growing old. The five Llewelyn-Davies children, who inspired Peter, all died young. It was Barrie who never grew up.