This week, By Jove researcher and performer Nicole Savin takes a look at a modern day British legend that is currently the hot topic in London’s West End…
John Logan’s new play, Peter and Alice opened two weeks ago and although I have yet to see it, I thought it was worth discussing, not only because it stars the legendary Judi Dench and Skyfall’s Ben Whishaw (well, technically, Skyfall‘s Judi Dench as well), but because here at By Jove, we have made it our mission to re-examine the canon of Western literature and how much of it has now ceased to be confined by its original work and now has legendary status. Today I’ll be tackling the ‘Peter’ half of the equation, but, if you’re lucky, in future I may take on Alice as well. So, is Peter Pan a myth in 21st Century Britain? And because we are proud feminists here, how do Peter and his various incarnations treat the ladies in his life?
To my mind, I don’t think the former question is very difficult. Peter Pan is old enough that modern children don’t have the foggiest idea who wrote it, which to me is the essential test in the same way that most people don’t know the stories of fairytales outside of their Disney incarnations. They also usually don’t encounter Peter through his original source text first; they find him in the Disney film, or the 1954 musical version, or through numerous panto versions each Christmas. These dozens and dozens of versions prove that Peter has joined the ranks of folktales and legends, and many expand on his Neverland, giving him a past and a future, and an origin story.
Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw in ‘Peter and Alice’, starring as the two real-life individuals that inspired Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. (Source: Johan Perrson/Vanity Fair)
Late nineteenth century author J.M. Barrie himself began the mythos of the boy who wouldn’t grow up. Peter Pan first turns up in Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird as a small boy who had escaped to Kensington Gardens to live amongst the fairies. He didn’t appear as a fully-fledged character, however, until he leapt onto the London stage in 1904’s Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. On a May morning in 1912, a statue of the elusive flying boy appeared, as if by magic, in Kensington Gardens, his fabled home. The very first screenplay for an (unproduced) silent film version of Peter Pan was written by J.M. Barrie himself (you can read it in Maria Tatar’s wonderful The Annotated Peter Pan), and from there, things just took off, and today Peter Pan is certainly more widely-known than lesser, but more ‘authentic’, fairytales, on par with the Cinderellas, the Snow Whites, and the more modern iterations of the Wizard of Oz But Peter Pan doesn’t deal in princesses, or fearless Kansas schoolgirls. Female fans of Neverland look to Wendy, or to Jane, or in the latest incarnation, to Wendy’s mother, the brilliant Molly Aster.
Wendy is a tough one, because she is, in many respects, a proper Edwardian girl in the original texts. In the 1954 musical, she is definitely a romantic lead, taking a back seat to the more outgoing Tiger Lily. Wendy is always kind and generous, and the study of motherhood and growing up in Edwardian London is intriguing. Wendy is not at all a bad role model, but I know as a millennial, I look for a bit of an adventurous spirit in my heroines. Versions that came after Barrie’s have fixed this for me: in P.J. Hogan’s 2003 film version, Wendy is more aware than ever that growing up spells the end of her childhood larks. Wendy actually joins the ranks of the Jolly Roger’s pirates, at one point, taking up the name ‘Red-Handed Jill’ and getting to wield a sword. In the Stiles and Drewe musical version, Wendy finally gets to question the role that the Lost Boys thrust her into when she sings: ‘I’ve a feeling I’ve grown up too fast. All these children have need of my love, but still I can’t see: if I mother them, who will mother me?’ At the end of the original text, as well as in an interesting Disney sequel, Wendy’s daughter, Jane (in a moment that rips out my heart every time) steps up to take her mother’s place when Wendy has grown too old and forgotten how to fly:
“She is my mother,” Peter explained; and Jane descended and stood by his side, with the look in her face that he liked to see on ladies when they gazed at him.
“He does so need a mother,” Jane said.
“Yes, I know.” Wendy admitted rather forlornly; “no one knows it so well as I.”
Wendy is cast aside like many of the things that Peter enjoys for a while but tires of. Even Jane (as all children are ‘heartless’), tells her “You see you can’t fly.”
Adam Chanler-Berat and Celia Keenan-Bolger in the Broadway production of ‘Peter and the Starcatcher’. (Source: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
As a ten-year-old reading the original play for the first time, and then the novel, the idea of all of this was pretty horrifying. Having the time of your life and then being cast aside and forgotten? It certainly is melancholy. Thankfully, Peter and the Starcatcher stepped in to make me feel a bit better about loving Peter unabashedly (even if I would still, eventually, have to leave Neverland behind). Molly Aster heads this play (based on the similarly titled novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson), and she is everything I hope I would be if Peter Pan turned up on my windowsill. She is utterly fearless, and fiercely intelligent. And a budding feminist herself:
“And when I marry, I shall make it very clear to this person– that sentimentality is not on the calendar. he will have to lump it or leave it. And if he should leave, I’ll stay a spinster and pin my hair back and volunteer weekends at hospital. And I will love words for their own sake like ‘hyacinth’ and ‘Piccadilly’ and ‘onyx’. And I’ll have a good old dog, and think what I like, and be part of a different sort of family, with friends, you know? – who understand that things are only worth what you’re willing to give up for them.”
So, perhaps one day soon Peter Pan will be on the table for a By Jove interpretation (I know I keep hinting at it). It’s a myth, and there’s lots to explore, and while there has been no shortage of modern day reimagining for Peter, Wendy, Hook and company, the potential is certainly there for Neverland to come back once more.
