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Theatre reviews: Peter Pan
Scotsman, 19th December 2008
By Joyce McMillan
THIS has been a remarkable year for theatre in Aberdeen. The
new Aberdeen Performing Arts initiative was launched in September,
with a heartfelt production of Sunset Song that toured to Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Perth and Inverness; the bankrupt Lemon Tree arts
centre was taken over and saved, and soon became host to a short
season of new writing that should produce some exciting work
over the next few years. The city rounds off the year with one
of the finest pantos of the season, in Alan Cohen’clever,
warm-hearted, deeply traditional yet bang-up-to-the-minute staging
of the pantomime version of Peter Pan.
It’a measure of the strength of JM Barrie’wonderful
story, of course, that it lends itself to so many different kinds
of drama, from animated films to serious children’theatre.
But with the addition of a comedy cook aboard Captain Hook’ship,
who happens to be the doting Mum of cabin-boy Smee, it also makes
a great pantomime, particularly when it’blessed – as
it is in Aberdeen – with such a joyful combination of inspired
casting, and real enjoyment of all the old panto rituals.
Cohen’Peter Pan is none other than Keith Jack, the Edinburgh-born
Any Dream Will Do star who has since begun a successful career
in stage musicals; and although he’not a great actor, he
sings well, and has a big, genial personality. His superb Captain
Hook is Alan Fletcher, best known to British audiences as Dr
Carl Kennedy in Neighbours, but also a rock musician with a great
voice; his Smee is young Jordan Young, one of the rising stars
of the new generation of Scottish actors.
And his Dame, above all – the fabulous, irrepressible,
Maggie Celeste (“adrift without a man in sight”)
– is Alan McHugh, who learned his panto trade in Kirkcaldy,
and is now perhaps the best Scottish Dame around. His comic double-act
with the dimwitted Smee is the very heart and soul of traditional
knockabout panto, full of idiotic verbal misunderstandings and
mild slapstick; they even do that old “Busy Bee”
number, with the mouths full of water. Their local jokes are
rich and jolly, if not exactly bitingly satirical; “Oh
look,” says the Dame, flying on a wire during the Saturday
matinee, “I can see Pittodrie from up here, and we’2-0
up against Falkirk!”
And in terms of participation, this company have the audience
eating out of their hands, roaring “behind-you”s
and “oh, no you don’t”s as if Aberdeen were
bidding for a new image as the jolliest city in Britain. Add
lots of wee Aberdeen kids up on stage dancing their hearts out,
and some gorgeous, magical flying from Peter Pan, and you have
a near-perfect family panto. All it needs is for the story to
come full circle at the end, back to the Darlings’city bedroom,
and perfection might actually be achieved.
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