Review of Peter Pan (Broadway in Chicago)

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Peter Pan. This is not any old Peter Pan. Peter Pan was played by Cathy Rigby who does amazing acrobatics even though she is 60! The production is from when my mom was a kid. She watched it on television when she was about my age. I liked how they were bringing back something from almost 40 years ago because people can go and see it and it will remind them of their mom or it could remind them of when they were a kid. This Peter Pan is exciting, amazing, and good to see with the whole family.

When you walk into the theater you will see a picture of London. Then, when the show starts, Peter Pan's voice comes on and says "I'm so happy that you guys will be flying with me tonight." There is a live orchestra which gets you more involved in the story and makes you believe these things are actually possible. The changes of the scenes I thought were really cool because they would show you just a flat straight picture of London or a map. And then that would go up and there would be a completely new set and that set would be so complicated that you didn't know how they did it in such little time. My favorite of the sets was the Indian set with the silk. If you would like to know what a silk is, you can learn it from me...ADA GREY! A silk is a long strip of silk that will support your weight and you can do lots of amazing circus moves. I thought Tiger Lily (Jenna Wright) was amazing on the silks.

There was a scene where the pirates had decided to make a poison cake, and then they found out where the boys live because Captain Hook (Brent Barrett) sat on a giant mushroom. It happened to be their chimney and it was so hot that he said "Ah!" and he thought his clothes were on fire. Then Captain Hook and Smee (James Leo Ryan) took off the top of the mushroom, and at first they were super calm, and then they started going "Hot hot hot hot hot!" And then they looked down the chimney and the saw and heard the lost boys. Then when they came back instead of just putting it back, again they went "Hot hot hot hot hot." I thought it was really funny because they kept going "hot hot hot hot hot" even though it should have cooled off a little bit by then. I thought it made it funny, but in actual logic it should have been medium hot.

There was this really cool choreography in this song that was called Ugg-a-Wugg. I know that it is not exactly right to do the Ugg-a-Wugg song because it is kind of culturally insensitive, but it is still a fun song. They make fun of Indians' language, which is not a good thing. When I was younger I used to think of the Ugg-a-Wugg song as just play language, and if you think of it that way, then it is fine. I like this song though because I think of it as play language. The choreography makes me feel very excited because there is a lot of drumming, and drumming makes me feel happy. I am not a professional at drums, but I do know how to do a few beats, so I was trying to pick up some of their techniques. I liked how everybody who was in that scene had a solo.

There is a thing that I think some kids would find a little bit betraying if they watched The Little Mermaid because all of the mermaids in that are very nice and sweet--except for that weird octopus lady. But in this the mermaid (Kim Crosby) is very selfish and cruel. I think that since mermaids don't actually exist, that is fine, but if they did then I don't think it would be fine. If mermaids actually existed it would be racist, but they don't, so it is totally fine to do that. I think it is a very cool approach because almost everybody thinks of mermaids as beautiful creatures that are very sweet, but they aren't in this play.

I thought the Crocodile (Clark Roberts) was really awesome because it did some really funny things like when Peter Pan had been fighting with Captain Hook after the bows, the Crocodile came on stage and Captain Hook ran away. Then the Crocodile took a little bow and I thought that was really funny because he is a crocodile and crocodiles don't really know how to take bows.

I thought the flying was really fantastic because everybody I thought made it look so real. I thought how Peter Pan did the acrobatics in the air and kept flying offstage and on was breathtaking. I really liked how Cathy Rigby could do flips and somersaults in the air. And there was a lot of climbing up walls and I thought that was very real looking.

People who would like this show are people who like flying, drumming, and very hot giant mushrooms. People should see this show because it is breathtaking and gets you very involved with the story.

Photos: Isaac James