Over-Worked!

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 590, 16 February 1929, Page 24

Over-Worked!

Barrie's “ Peter Pan. ” Jean Forbes Robertson Gives Him a Russian Interpretation Pamela Travers writes from London of this year’s production of “Peter Pan”:— Peter Pan is, of course, with us again. It may be said of that wretched over-worked boy that if he never grew up he at any rate grows old. He creaks abominably under the weight of his twenty-five years of production; he Is very wheezy and his manner of moving about Is that of one of the first motor-cars. He rattles and clangs, stops dead and goes on again with a snort and a groan that are sad to hear. I think this must at least have been realised by the producers for, after a lapse of nine years, they have restored the Lagoon Scene, which gives Peter such a wonderful chance to sigh and look noble and say pompously, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

The small but most intelligent girl who accompanied—or rather took me —to this year’s production was also my companion last year, and X felt that my own sentiments were echoed when she said in a loud and piercing whisper which must have been heard all over the theatre, “Good gracious, I’ve seen this thing before!” Later on, when the moment for the burst of clapping came, she put her hands stubbornly behind her back and sat quite still. “Not,” she explained, “because I don’t believe in fairies—but why Is that big girl up there pretending to be a little boy and trying to make me say I do?” Again my sentiments were echoed. I shall never love Peter Pan truly—

if indeed it is not already too late for that —until the part is played by a little boy and not a galumphing grownup. Wendy was a delicious creature this year, and she still had the marks of childhood upon her, hut Jean Forbes Robertson never was and never will for a moment be Peter Pan. She plays the part as though it had been written by Dostoievsky, tries to give It deep and solemn meanings that Barrie’s superficial creation does not merely consider uncalled for, but actually resents. She overloads the play so much that if I were a child I should go home in tears and beg to be taken to see Hamlet as a Christmas treat. Indeed I think that the Small Girl who took me would have preferred Hamlet. It is nearer her level of intelligence than Peter Pan.