PETER PAN at the National Theatre: Flying Blind....

Nearly twenty years ago the National Theatre staged a production of PETER PAN at the Olivier Theatre directed by John Caird as their Christmas show.  It was a full-on "bells and smells" production with lavish sets, lengthy running time and star names like Ian McKellen as Captain Hook and Jenny Agutter as Mrs Darling to buttress the relatively unknown Daniel Evans as Peter.

And now it's back in a new co-production with Bristol Old Vic.  I wish I had a better experience with it but it was a long slog, especially the first act.   Yes they fly... but the show is preciously short on wonder.  To be honest I had only booked as Sophie Thompson was due to play Mrs Darling / Captain Hook but she injured her wrist in rehearsals and pulled out.  Thank you for that Sophie *glares*

My heart sank when I realized that Paul Hilton (Peter Pan), Anna Francolini (Mrs Darling/Captain Hook) and Lois Chimimba (Tiger Lily) had all played star roles in the National Theatre's Xmas shitefest in 2015 WONDER.LAND, the absolute nadir in theatregoing. But here they were being directed by Sally Cookson who was responsible for the NT's 2014 Xmas show TREASURE ISLAND - again here we have her shtick of having non-traditionalist casting.

What was so depressing particularly about the first half was the grinding inevitability of the bete noir of my theatre-going this year - the absurd 'poor theatre' trops that flag that the production you see has the taint of Director Concept Theatre.  Teeth-grindingly over-played comedy roles such as Felix Hayes as Mr Darling and Ahamed Saikat as a gibberish, loutish Tinkerbell (both acting as if he is playing to an audience of retarded 4 year-olds), a woeful music score and, the ultimate banal artistic choice, filling the big bare stage with bits of old wood, corrugated iron and old carpet to turn into scenery and have moth-eaten woollen jumpers and bobble-hats donned as costumes.

It's so redundant as a stylistic choice and here is the real kick in the soft parts - all these faux-poor theatre trappings - and my ticket cost £52.  I really have no idea where that money went, it certainly was not reflected in the production.  It is the banal thought processes that have reached their laughable limit in the debacle of Emma Rice's sanctioned performances at the Globe this year.  They are trumpeted as 'magical' but they haven't the slightest shred of magic about them.  Let alone humour...

But even the lumpen thud of an ugly production cannot stand in the way of J.M. Barrie's story of the boy who wouldn't grow up and as the second half is pure plot it thundered along giving Hilton as Peter and Madeleine Worrall as Wendy real chances to shine, particularly in the final scene when Barrie highlights the inherent sadness of Peter's remaining forever outside of life and Wendy's in moving away forever from her childhood.  Anna Francolini was okay as Mrs Darling but made hardly any impression as Captain Hook, the NT keep trying to push her as a lead actress in these shows but to paraphrase my dear friend Andrew "as long as she's got a hole in her arse she'll always be supporting".  She simply doesn't have the star wattage for lead roles.

I first saw a production of PETER PAN onstage in 1969 - a mere babe in arms - at the New Victoria Theatre which featured Hayley Mills as Peter (in her UK stage debut) and Bill Travers as Captain Hook, I suspect in true JM Barrie fashion I am still pining for that more innocent show...

In the past week I have been to the National Film Theatre (BFI South Bank m'arse) twice - yes Constant Reader, just like the old days.

First off it was to see a little-seen Michael Redgrave film from 1939 A WINDOW IN LONDON directed by Herbert Mason. I had not heard of the film - it doesn't even rate a mention in Alan Strachan's biography of the actor - but it turned out to be an intriguing little gem.
It's quite remarkable to consider how quickly Redgrave had established himself - A WINDOW IN LONDON was filmed only five years after he made his professional stage debut and in that time he had become a star of classical revivals with seasons at Tyrone Guthrie's Old Vic and with John Gielgud's company at the Queens Theatre.

He had left Gielgud's season early to make his film debut starring in Hitchcock's 1938 classic thriller THE LADY VANISHES and his film career took off immediately - in 1939, the year he made A WINDOW IN LONDON, he also starred in two Carol Reed films: CLIMBING HIGH with Jessie Matthews and THE STARS LOOK DOWN with Margaret Lockwood as well as A STOLEN LIFE with Elisabeth Bergner. Oh and starred in the premiere production of T.S. Eliot's THE FAMILY REUNION... and all this while aged 31.

In A WINDOW TO LONDON, he plays Peter, a crane operator working on the building of the new Waterloo Bridge. His wife Pat (Patricia Roc) is a night-time switchboard operator in Dolphin Square so they hardly see each other. One morning when his tube train goes overground, he sees a man stabbing a woman through an open window. He races to the house with a handy policeman to discover what Peter saw was an illusionist Zoltini (Paul Lukas) practising a trick with his wife Vivienne (Sally Gray) who is also his glamorous assistant.

The press report the incident and Vivienne's smarmy agent friend manages to get them a booking through the resultant publicity but Zoltini's hair-trigger jealousy leads to yet another argument and she storms out midway through the act - straight into Peter who has come to see their act. Needing an escape from the world, Peter takes her - ahem - up the crane and he gives way to her sultry charms. She takes him to a swanky party at the agent friend's apartment but finds she has left her bag at the crane. The obliging Peter goes to fetch it only to find the vengeful Zoltini waiting for him...
Peter and Zoltini have fistycuffs which results in Zoltini's plunge from the bridge. What now for our hapless hero? Will Peter face the gallows for murder? What of his marriage now he is under the spell of Vivienne? There are two more neat twists to the plot before all is resolved.

Although the characters become little more than pawns to the screenwriter's fevered plotting, the winning performances of the four leads have won you over as their lives spiral out of control and keep you onside despite the twists and turns of the last act. Patricia Roc is a trifle insipid as the nice girl but Mason wisely concentrates on Redgrave, Lukas and in particular Sally Gray in the main. Sally Gray makes a memorable femme fatale and one can quite imagine how the sex-starved Peter would fall for her sultry charms. It's a shame she is not as well-known as she should be.

The film has a wealth of London locations and it was intriguing to see the building of Waterloo Bridge with the open vistas on each side of the Thames. The film was shown with a 1944 short film LONDON TERMINUS which covered a day at Waterloo Station. It was quite fascinating seeing the main concourse looking not that different from it does today but to see little details lost to us now such as the timetable being changed by a long pole closing the wooden slats with the names written on them and the surprise of seeing a news cinema inside the concourse. It made for a hugely enjoyable Friday evening double-bill.

The second trip was to see Ronald Neame's 1963 screen version of Enid Bagnold's play THE CHALK GARDEN which had the all-star cast of Deborah Kerr, John & Hayley Mills and Edith Evans.
Bagnold's play - which was given such a memorable production at the Donmar in 2008 - was adapted by John Michael Hayes (who wrote the screenplays for four Hitchcock films including REAR WINDOW) but very little of what makes the play so remarkable remains in the film. Where the play is primarily about the war of wills between the eccentric but formidable Mrs. St. Maugham and the governess she has employed to manage her wilful grand-daughter Laurel, the film moves the focus to the governess Miss Madrigal and Laurel thus making it an amiable teen rights-of-passage film instead of something deeper.

It's not that the performances are at fault although I have never been a particular fan of either Kerr or John Mills. Edith Evans deserved her Academy Award nomination for her stately performance and Hayley Mills shows that she was a child actress who really could hold her own against the best adult performers. It's not even that the film itself is bad - Ronald Neame's direction is measured and manages to sustain the underlying tension as to what is the secret of Miss Madrigal's past. It's just a bit smothered by the standard Ross Hunter high-gloss production.

It's just a letdown that the play could not have been adhered to more - Edith Evans would probably have won the Academy Award if the adaptation had included Mrs. St. Maugham's final showdown with her daughter who arrives to take back her daughter.

The screening was introduced by Julie Harris who designed the costumes for the film. Now in her late eighties, it was a delight to hear her recollections on the making of the film and a quick shufty at her filmography shows that her next two films were A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and CARRY ON CLEO - how versatile can you get!