Faced with a gigantic black stage cloth and two wooden ladders flanking an unmade bed, for a moment I thought I had taken a wrong turn on the South Bank and walked into a Tracey Emin installation at the Tate Modern. But as soon as Anna Francolini made her entrance as Mrs Darling, tucked in the sheets, puffed up the pillows, restored a floor-tossed teddy to its rightful place in the heart of the mattress and uttered the immortal words “Two is the beginning of the end”, my fears were allayed.

Peter Pan, a devised co-production between the National Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic playing at the Olivier Theatre until 4 February, is a triumph of hydraulics and storytelling, star turns and ensemble playing, with the triumvirate of professional counterweighters Kieran Gonzales, Maurycy Kowalski and Barnaby Wreyford deserving as much credit as the 20-strong cast of actors and musicians led by Paul Hilton as the green-suited and cock-a-doodle-dooing Peter Pan and Madeleine Worrall as the blue-striped-pajamaed and goo-gooing Wendy who unlike Peter follows her mother’s advice to “grow up”.

After a comical opening in which Peter is reunited with his illusive shadow and Ekow Quartery’s shaggy-dogged nanny is banished outside for interrupting Mr and Mrs Darling’s nightly ritual of medicine dispensation, crybaby Michael (John Pfumojena) and petulant John (Marc Antolin) follow their sister Wendy out of the bedroom window and up into a multi-coloured galaxy of shooting stars and spinning planets so that she can tell a bedtime story to Peter’s parentless gang of friends the Lost Boys who reside on the mystical island of Neverland.

With a sudden rise of the gigantic black stage cloth, we are transported from the confined domestic setting of a child’s bedroom to an expansive underground playpark with paint-splattered walls, platforms on scaffold, a fast-revolving floor and a resident rock band strumming electric guitars in a backlit recess. Think CBBC on LSD. From here, the wings of J. M. Barrie’s much-loved story take flight. Speaking of which, the rigging system and counterweight artists are in full view throughout. As are the multitude of props and mechanisms used to represent everything from birds and clouds to crocodiles and lagoons. A bold move by director Sally Cookson and set designer Michael Vale which pays off big time.

Bar a brief lull in proceedings towards the end of Act One when the sprinkling of fairy dust is curtailed to accommodate a series of cat-and-mouse chases involving pirates and wolves, and despite a couple of back-to-back songs near the start of Act Two which serve little purpose other than creating an upbeat mood for Anna Francolini’s Captain Hook to break as she seeks revenge for being tossed into crocodile-infested waters, this co-production between the National Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic is a joy which appeals to the “young, innocent and heartless” as well as those for whom Peter has a life-long aversion: adults with office jobs.

Paul Hilton is fantastic as Peter Pan, with just the right mix of innocence and swagger. And when he struts and pouts his way across the stage in time and tune to music director Benji Bower’s live score, he is not unlike a young Mick Jagger. Madeleine Worrall is a great foil and imbues Wendy with the required qualities of maternity and earnestness. And Anna Francolini is the “picture of menace, picture of malice, picture of malevolence” as Captain Hook, never once straying into the realms of panto.

As for the finale, well, like all good fairy tales they all lived happily ever after – with the exception of Captain Hook who comes to a snappy ending! And after nearly two and a half hours of jaw-dropping acrobatics and eye-popping scenery, it was both moving and comforting to hear the adult Wendy reassure her daughter Jane (Amaka Okafor) that no matter what “the window is always open”. Good news for twentysomethings returning to the nest as austerity continues to bite. Bad news for holidaymakers returning home to find that their worldly possessions have been stolen by the Lost Boys!

Peter Callaghan
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