Sunday, January 16, 2011

Review of Peter Pan: A Play at Lookingglass Theatre

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called...it is one of the greatest books of all and it has a Walt Disney movie of it...Peter Pan!  The story is about a little boy that didn't want to grow up, and he takes some kids that had to grow up--he takes them to Neverland.  I do believe in fairies, luckily.  Because you have to believe in fairies or one fairy will die.  It is at Lookingglass.  The stories and the plays that they do are kids' books, but the shows there are more for grownups than for kids.  I've seen Alice in Wonderland there.  Once I had to go out of the whole entire theater there because a knight went into the audience.  I was younger then.  I did not want to leave the theater during this play.

Tinkerbell was played by Aislinn Mulligan.  She was good at playing Tinkerbell.  She had to dingle a bell and hold up a green light.  The person who played Tinkerbell was not like Tinkerbell in the two movies I saw.  Tinkerbell was like a blond little fairy in a green dress and in the other movie she was like a green light that dingled.  But in this play she was actually not just a light; she was a girl too.  She was like choking out her words when she drank the poison.  I felt kind of sorry for her.  She like talked to other characters only at one part, and Peter Pan explained what she was saying at the beginning--most of the time. I liked her a little bit more than the other Tinkerbells that I saw.


Nana was played by Royer Bockus.  She did a good job, and she had to talk because she didn't want to just bark.  Nana was also in both movies that I saw.  This one she didn't have to dress up exactly like a dog.  How she wore a bow was a little bit doggish.  She talked in her regular voice and didn't bark, but that was kind of cool how she didn't bark at all. There was this funny scene where Nana said "Who wants to be first on the toothbrushing train?" And then John says "I do! I do!"


Wendy went on an adventure with Peter Pan and her two brothers.  The person that played the part was Kay Kron.  I thought she did a good job playing Wendy because she had to be hanged from lots of stuff.  I liked how she had to fly very very high and she had to fly in the dark--that looked pretty hard.  She is trying to make a good mother for the lost children.  She is pretty young to be a mother, and she's pretty excited about it because she didn't know she would get to be a mother so soon.  She learned at the end that it is fun to pretend to be mothers but it is more fun to really be a mother.  She feels a little sad that Peter Pan is taking her daughter Jane (Sarah Fornace)--but she also feels kind of happy. Jane did a good job and she actually in the play was really good at being like a kid.  She pointed at something, and then she would just say what it was, and then she would smash it with the pillow. I thought that was so cute.

John and Michael were played by Jamie Abelson and Alex Weisman.  At a funny part they set out breadcrumbs, and John said "These breadcrumbs will lead us home." And then right behind him Michael was and he was eating all the breadcrumbs.  And he was actually eating them I thought!  They had to fly in the dark with Wendy, and if they fell they couldn't get up until that part was up.  They seemed like they didn't know how to fly already, but they did know how to fly a bit because Peter Pan told them.  And the funny thing was that Michael dropped a few times right over the raging river and he said "AAAAAH, raging river!!"

The lost boys were named Tootles (Nate Trinrud), Nibs (Kareem Bandealy), Curly (Kelley Abell), and Slightly (Matt Holzfeind).   Curly was played by a girl.  I knew it because of her name in the program.  She had to climb out of this dusty thing, and she wore this outfit that was a little bit big for her.  And she wore this beret and a green top and a kind of puffy long sleeves under it.  I thought that was cool.  She said "I am NOT a girl and I always raise my hand when Peter Pan asks a question." That was pretty cool and funny.  Nibs was good and he wore a cap and he got captured by the pirates once but Peter Pan saved him.  Nibs was pretty funny because, when Wendy and Peter Pan were dancing, he got out a little tiny hilarious cat kind of clock that made music.  And it went like ding ding ding ding ding ding--it only went ding. Slightly touched one of my fairies that I brought to the show.  The lost boys did the Peter Pan dance and then Slightly made a sound like this: pe-uurrrh.  That was supposed to indicate shutting down.  I thought it was really funny.  Tootles was the youngest one of them, and he wore like a funny little dinosaur cape.  He had to shoot a gun even though he was the youngest. But not a real one--noooo not a real one.  They did a gun instead of a arrow because if you shoot an arrow if you want it to look real it has to be a real one.  He was kind of funny because he was trying to kill himself, but then he jumped off a place and he said "that didn't work," and he did it over and over again. 


And the lost person who was the lost girl was played by Ericka Ratcliff.  Her name was Lily.  Lily dies in the play, but she did come back out later in the play because she was pushing things around.  I don't remember a lost girl in the movie or the book but I think she was based on Tiger Lily.  Tiger Lily is an Indian Princess who is there in Neverland. There was a part where she said that grownups always lie to you, but I didn't think so.  She could take care of herself good; she just forgot about what she thought about mothers.  They put on a speaker that she was forgetting about the whole thing.  


Captain Hook was sometimes kind of funny--he was really funny at some points.  There is a funny part where he says "Planning music, please."  I saw another Peter Pan play that had similar planning music.  Captain Hook was played by Thomas J. Cox. Captain Hook had to climb a lot of things.  He was good at the climbing because he had to like climb really fast.  I think he was a good Captain Hook. Even though I know it was just a play, sometimes I was a little scared, but I thought he did a good job acting it. Then when we heard Captain Hook's story we started to love him too.


Smee lost her girl, and she was looking for it ,and she was calling for her, so she was saying "Honey, it'smee."  She was saying "Honey, it's me," so Captain Hook decided to call her Smee because that was what she was calling herself. Captain Hook just decided she would be a good pirate.  She was played by Molly Brennan.  She was also in Animal Crackers and she played Harpo.  I like the Marx Brothers a lot, and I thought she did a really good job at it.  She was kind of like the Smee I thought she would be.  I thought she was going to be loving, kind of, after you heard her backup story--because in the movies Smee was kind of loving, and  this Smee was kind of loving too.  We felt sorry for her because she couldn't find her daughter.  She loved the babies so much because she really wanted to be someone's mother because she missed her daughter so much.


Raymond Fox played Mr. Darling and one of the Pirates.  I know him and I know his daughter too and we have lots of playdates together.  The Pirate that he played was sort of scary but he wasn't the scariest one.  Mr. Darling was kind of angry at some parts but not
all the time.  It was kind of funny because he was so angry about the tie, which is actually not that big a deal.  At the beginning of the show all of the characters came out, then Mr. Darling as a kid picked me up, and I turned on a light.  I thought that was cool.  And when he held out his arms I was like, "what?"  But then I was like" ok, I'll do it."  But then he lifted me up, and I was not expecting that.  I expected something not so high up.  I was a little afraid, but I knew it was going to be alright because it was Raymond and I knew he wouldn't try and drop me. And I'm glad that he wasn't dressed like a pirate because I would have freaked out because that was a real scary costume and I would not have let anyone that was dressed like that pick me up because then I would have been like "gulp-aaaaaah!" The gulp is when you swallow when you are so scared.

When the Pirates came out was kind of scary.  Because when they came out they came out in the middle of nowhere and the Clown (Adeoye) just came out first and he didn't look that scary because nobody was actually looking at the dagger necklace.  Not even me.  They came out of the curtains and this lady had like long long claws that looked really sharp and real.  And there was one that was like all black with a helmet on.  The looked scarier than just like striped shirts and pants and pirate hats because they wanted it to be a little more scary than the usual Peter Pan is.  It was supposed to be more of a grown-up play, and it was supposed to be unexpected, and it was very unexpected.


Mrs. Darling was played by Amy J. Carle.  She had to help Mr. Darling put on his tie and you saw big shadows there.  When Wendy, John, and Michael came home to their beds, she thought she was dreaming but then she wasn't.  I thought it was kind of emotioning and I thought it was very cute.  When they just started doing like a big hug, I started crying.  Tears started rolling down my cheek and down to my finger--which is not that far--and then it dropped.  She actually thought that she was dreaming, and then she just created a big hug, and I thought that was kind of touching.

Peter Pan was played by Steve Lenz.  He was a really good Peter Pan I thought because he could fly really well and he could do lots of cool stuff like he could actually make a realish-fake emotion. Like when he was angry he really looked really angry.  I loved the scene where he taught them how to fly.  I also liked where Tinkerbell took the poison medicine.  The medicine was really actually water or maybe they weren't drinking anything at all--which would be better than using real poison.  Peter's emotion was very sad during that part.  When everybody in the whole entire theater started clapping he said, "NO!  That makes it worse!" We were supposed to laugh and giggle and hahahaha. 

There was a fight scene with Peter Pan and Captain Hook and it was really dangerous because they were walking on something that was moving and not that stable. And people were pushing it around and if those people had fallen off all of them could have broken their heads.  They tried to make it be scarier so nobody could believe these people were actually doing it.  It was cool how much they had to climb and some people had to fly during it.


This should be for ages 4 and up because my friend Nora has seen it and she is 4 and she didn't think it was that scary. People that like sword fighting, cool things, scary things and things that go up really high and bright things and being in the dark would like this play.  I do not like being in the dark, but I liked it anyway.  It was a really awesome version of the Peter Pan play.  


Photos: Sean Williams

  

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