Review: JM Barrie’s Peter Pan ***

When you find yourself included on a list of the Top Ten Living UK Playwrights, it inevitably leads to raised expectations. So to Mike Kenny, who had been quietly going about the business of making theatre for children, when his adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children catapulted him onto a whole new level. That show, which premiered in York three years ago, moved to London’s St Pancras and onwards to Toronto earning five star reviews and making Kenny a man much in demand.

His latest work has just opened at York Theatre Royal and like The Railway Children it’s a reinvention of an old favourite. Kenny has scraped the Disney gloss from traditional productions of Peter Pan and gone back to JM Barrie’s original book for a show which is full of heart and allows the audience to step straight inside the pages of a fairytale. While The Railway Children used adult actors to play the three main leads, here York Theatre Royal’s artistic director, Damien Cruden, has instead cast youngsters. There’s four rotating teams and with the children outnumbering the adults it’s a brave decision. Judging on the evidence of the performance we saw, it almost pays off.

Laura Soper as Wendy is outstanding, delivering a word-perfect performance. Joshua Robinson and Josh Benson as Wendy’s younger brothers Michael and John also look naturals on the stage, but the Lost Boys struggle to keep the momentum going. It’s a lot to ask of a very young cast and there are too many times when this production almost slows to a halt.

Kenny has a reputation for injecting humour into his scripts and Peter Pan is no different, but here there’s an over-reliance on the kind of gags more familiar to panto fans. The show looks fantastic and the flying scenes are an undoubted highlight. However, in the heat of the summer when temperatures in the theatre are raised almost to boiling point, it takes far too long to get going and despite the best efforts of Wendy, Peter and a cast of hapless pirates this sadly isn’t quite another runaway success for Kenny and the team at York.

To September 3.