Russell Davies offers a unique piece of theatre history - an insight into the world premiere of Peter Pan one hundred years ago.
Peter Pan has been a constant source of fascination - spawning countless documentaries, books, films and theatre productions. In Peter Pan takes Flight we return to the night of December 27th 2004 and the very first production of J.M. Barrie’s play at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London’s West End.
A complicated plot with myriad stage directions had delayed the opening for a week with Barrie spending the Christmas holiday doing re-writes. The technical demands of the play were immense, not least the flying and we hear from the granddaughter of the founder of Kirby’s Flying Ballet how Barrie himself tested the harness.
The cast was a starry one with Gerald du Maurier doubling as Captain Hook/Mr.Darling, a tradition still respected. Hilda Trevelyan played the original Wendy, a name Barrie invented, whose theatrical Wendy house was to inspire a century of commercial spin-offs. Peter himself was played by Nina Boucicault with brother Dion directing the play and Charles Frohman, the American impressario later to lose his life in the sinking of the Lusitania, producing.
It was an instant hit. The Daily Telegraph review was stunning in its praise:
" Peter Pan is a play of such originality, of such tenderness, and of such daring, that not even a shadow of doubt regarding its complete success was to be discerned in the final fall of the curtain.... It is so true, so natural, so touching, that it brought the audience to the writer's feet and held them captive there“.
But others in the first night audience were less than complimentary - George Bernard Shaw complained that it was a play foisted on children by grown-ups and Anthony Hope, the inventor of Ruritania, sat unmoved throughout the performance, and at the end was heard to remark: “Oh, for an hour of Herod!”.
