The University of Idaho Theatre Department’s “Wendy and Peter: Into Neverland” is filled with playfulness and child-like creativity.
With bedsheets and cardboard, directors Christina Holaday and Keely Ogden-Wright imbue the production with childlike qualities that grow stronger as the play progresses.
The set itself, simple, with sheets hanging like wings to a center stage window, seems to be the work of a highly-skilled and creative youngling. Even the crocodile, a symbol of fear for Captain Hook (Alex Wendel), was constructed by UI graduate student Michael Brandt, puppet extraordinaire, out of mismatched fabrics using the same thread woven into the children’s clothes.
The actors, most of whom are adults, do an uncanny job of depicting children nearly half their ages, portraying them as though acting out a story for their own sake.
However, the cast doesn’t leave the audience out of their fun. Throughout the play, actors break the fourth wall to speak to individual audience members, freely abandoning the stage for the seats. The cast transforms the audience to ensemble at the outset, beckoning children to the stage to listen to the story of Captain Hook.
Although the Theatre Department advertised the play as the story of Wendy Darling, continuing their streak of telling stories from the female’s perspectives, it was not Wendy’s story that resonated loudest, but Hook’s.
More than other stories of Neverland, “Wendy and Peter” allows the audience to empathize with Hook (Wendel) and his pirates, and provides a literal window into how Peter Pan (Gail Harder) can harm others through his seemingly innocent self-centeredness.
Being a child forever, in this play, is not romanticized. When the angel-like window of the Darlings’ home is raised, the audience can see the danger of never growing up.
“You are acting like a child, Mr. Hook,” Wendy (Paige Erbele) says when the pirates kidnap her and the Lost Ones, who are both genders in this production.
Hook himself, though grown, still seems unable to fully transition to adulthood. He is an over-grown, misunderstood bully who is driven by an understandable dislike of Peter Pan.
Children in “Wendy and Peter,” like real children, are not truly guileless, especially not Pan. Holaday, Wright-Ogden and Wendel’s adaptation of the boy is reminiscent of the mischievous Tom Sawyer in attitude. Pan’s forgetfulness leads him to take others away from their homes to be his friends, only to forget them shortly after. His single-minded dislike of pirates makes him want to kill them on sight.
The production offers a literal and figurative glimpse into the darkness of the distorted world of shadows, both Pan’s and other character’s.
One scene in particular stands out, showing the actors’ shadows before they come to the other side of the bedsheet. Hook’s is the last shadow to be shown, but he never makes it out of the world of silhouettes in the scene.
Though Hook and Pan may never grow up, for the others, play in Neverland cannot go on forever. As the production comes to a close, and the Darling children return home, Wendy leaves the audience with one last thought to dwell on.
“At one point or another,” she says. “We all know that we must grow up.”
“Wendy and Peter: Into Neverland,” next shows will be April 27 to April 30 in the Hartung Theatre. Tickets cost $5 to $15 for the public and are free for UI students.
Nina Rydalch can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NinaRobin7