Arrr! Photos by Raul Rubiera Jr. www.RaulRubiera.com

By James Johnson

The Cape Fear Regional Theater’s latest production, “Peter Pan,” is a whimsical romp, with moments of brilliance, which like its title character, hasn’t aged a bit.

A few years back I’d reviewed the CFRT’s production of “Cinderella,” not quite so positively - my distaste wasn’t so much for the production or the performers, but with the fact that the story of “Cinderella” is inherently a badly written story which has failed to stand the test of time - and so I felt it entirely unnecessary to revive it. Peter Pan is a perfect example of an old story, which was well written when it was first released, and remains so today, with very few missteps.

To keep up with the classic, the CFRT cast top notch talent, bringing in actress Megan Ellis, who has practically built her early career on sporting the green tights to play Peter Pan - and Broadway veteran Dirk Lumbard as one of the greatest villains of all time, Captain James Hook.

The rest of the cast is filled out with actress Mary Mattison Vallery as Wendy, Molly Griggs as Liza (the maid … more on that later), Gray Hurley as Michael, Austin Griggs as John, Andrea Mislan as leader of the Indians (or “Native Neverlanders”) Tiger Lily, and actor Robbie Gay as Hook’s right hand man Smee.

Fortunately, there existed no real weak links within the main cast, but the obvious standouts were actors Gay and Mislan, who were kind of hard not to watch while on stage, for very different reasons. While Smee, was essentially a human cartoon character (who had awesome chemistry with Lumbard), Mislan is just - an impossibly gifted dancer. Extra kudos are in order for Mislan for having worked double duty as choreographer.

Speaking of choreographing - I gotta mention that the sword fighting was a tad bit disappointing. Possibly due to a lack of proper rehearsal time, or just to be extra safe - the fights were crazy slow and kind of awkward to watch. Sword fights are exciting because they are fast - if they are slow, then they are pointless. The same awkwardness could be seen in any and all flying scenes - but I doubt there exists a way to swing a human around aimlessly on a rope that doesn’t look awkward.

As for Molly Griggs as Liza the maid - where as Molly did a fine job with what she was given, I and the person I’d seen the show with spent the entire evening trying to figure out why her character was there … Midway through the first act, the maid from the first scene just sorta flies in for some unexplained reason, then sorta wanders around aimlessly, appearing in the background of some scenes. It was actually kinda surreal - like, I started to wonder if I was the only one who could see her… I kept expecting her to jump out with a solution to all their problems, or have some significant reason for being there.

It was like watching one of those “Star Wars: Special Edition” DVDs, where George Lucas goes in later and edits in Jar Jar Binks where he doesn’t belong, and then you spend the whole scene looking at Jar Jar and waiting for him to do something useful.

In a way, “Peter Pan” the musical is kind of like a “Star Wars: Special Edition,” in that it is a revamp of something that really never needed a revamping from the start. Throughout most of it, you can tell that this is a very well written and smartly crafted story. There is foreshadowing, there are elements of tragedy, endless imagination and fascinating characters - but every time you get to a poignant moment in which you can feel the tears begin to sting the back of your eyes (again, truly great job by Ellis) - you can sense the re-writers getting nervous that they’ll lose the attention of the smaller children, and a Warner Brothers-style gag is tossed in.

The slapstick humor, even if unnecessary as I feel the story is strong enough without it, is pulled off with great expertise. Lumbard has again and again proven his versatility as a song and dance man, dramatic actor and now a great comic. Where’s this guy’s Tony?

Though the script may have suffered a bit from having gone through one too many rewrites, the important elements of the classic still remain.

4/5
****