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There has been sufficient pandemonium in the making of Pan to fill more pages than J.M. Barrie's enduringly popular tales of Peter Pan, the boy destined never to become a man.
It has been a difficult birth and much is riding on the success of Pan, a lavishly treated play promoted like a musical (it's not) and which its producers are loath to label a pantomime for fear of selling the $9.8 million-plus production short.
What, then, is Pan? How well is the wishful story about the power of the imagination told?
On a number of fronts, the production has been conceived as a film, a process fraught with difficulties as Disney Inc discovered when it translated Beauty and The Beast and The Lion King from screen to stage. The look and atmosphere of Pan are sumptuous and colourful. It resembles a children's pop-up book with shades of The Pirates of Penzance and The Phantom of the Opera yes, there's a boat gliding across the stage in fog. Pan is visually appealing. Its great asset is the weird, wonderful creatures: the Grocer Bird, the fribbits, Sheldon the cynical snurtle and, of course, the voracious crocodile which surfaces in true panto fashion, much to the eye-popping delight of children. The contribution of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and Peter Foy's flying innovations are crucial to Pan's magic and appeal. Their imaginative leaps give the light, sentimental storyline an invigorating wonder and idiosyncratic charm. The furry and scaly fauna risk stealing the show, as the entrance of Nana the sheepdog quickly testified. The tall poppy honkers also have a habit of seizing the limelight, usually when the drama sags or when director John Banas is unsure how to propel the action forward.
The script by Frank Gauntlett, an adaption of J.M. Barrie's Peter & Wendy, is witty in parts, with puns, malapropisms and tongue-twisters and an occasional double entendre to keep children and adults amused. But there are flat, uninspired patches and the potential emotion of the piece fails to be stirred. Troy Woodcroft and Raelee Hill give strongly delineated performances as Pan and Wendy, but they are limited in scope and little opportunity is given them to offer deeper interpretations.
The production demands more inspired touches and interaction to become greater than the sum of its parts.
The derivative pop song used to accompany their flying "duet" struck me as superficial and contrived. At least in a musical, performers directly express a character's emotion through song, but here the prerecorded soundtrack undercuts the potential for dynamic live performance.
Pan has high production values but there is too little connection between the actors and the creatures inhabiting the fantasy playground. Too often Banas's idea of drama is to pump up the volume and create commotion. The Indian Camp scene straight after interval is exactly that "camp" while I've seen more edge-of-seat fight sequences at Bell Shakespeare, Company B and the STC.
Pan is overlong considering how light the story is. Changes are desperately needed to give it a more unifying vision. An attention-seizing opening wouldn't go astray and the Skull Rock scene concluding Act I needs work to generate the level of excitement it is striving for.
In the figure of Captain Hook, Philip Quast puts the panache in Pan. His sonorous voice, comic flair and near-flawless turn of an alliterative phrase is a rare treat. Quast, who shone as Javert in Les Misérables and as Dr Neville Craven in The Secret Garden, is commanding, his depth of experience ensuring he finds secure footing amid the marvels. The actor also manages to make Hook fresh and spontaneous, never for a moment forgetting his audience.
Bill Kerr invests the narrator J.M. Barrie with sober stature and Terry Bader, Daniel Mitchell and Jenny Vuletic add strong support. As the doddery Old Cookson, Stuart Wagstaff is suitably more directionless and dazed than The Lost Boys while the ensemble is buoyant if not always on an even keel.
Woodcroft joyfully negotiates an exciting, liberating finale but without Quast's presence and authority Pan for all its screen and stage tricks would lose ballast quicker than the Jolly Roger.
With further refinement and resolute direction, the extravagant vaudeville should have no trouble staying afloat, maybe even to steer a course to a treasure all its own.
© The Sydney Morning Herald
