Independent Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 22 Aug 2014
It's a captivating thought, a meeting between the people who inspired two of the world's great children's stories - Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.
John Logan has pondered such an encounter and extrapolated it into a philosophic fantasy piece. How big an influence on their lives has been the burden of being famous literary characters?
His narrative device comes in the form of Alice selling an original manuscript when things become tight in her latter years while Peter has become a publisher, quite interested in extracting a memoir from Alice. They meet in London and compare notes as each is about to present a literary speech and, through the magic of Logan's theatricality, their reflections on life's experience evoke both the classic book versions of themselves as well as characters pivotal to their actuality.
Fact and imagination play together upon a rather handsome set whence a bookshop back room opens out into a garden of Wonderland and Neverland. Very clever design by David Roach with lovely artwork by Brian Budgen.
Logan's play, which had its first airing in London last year, is densely conversational and, in its early phases from the fairly negative perspectives of Peter Llewelyn Davies as portrayed by Will Cox, it has a sonorous ring. Noted Adelaide actress, Pam O'Grady, plays Alice Liddell Hargreaves as an old lady but therein she brings to life not only a might of perchance overwritten dialogue but lifts the production and the enduring spirit of old Alice with the gift of sparkling eyes. For her, impecuniousness is offset by a wealth of memory. Peter's experience of inherited celebrity has been more bruising. Research by literary historians in ensuing years throws paedophilia into the mix and there are hints at this shadow in the protagonists' pasts.
Ben Francis bounces bare-footed as the fictional Peter Pan and enchanting Emma Bleby embodies the Alice in blue we all know and love. The author, Lewis Carroll, otherwise known as Rev Charles Dodgson is nicely captured by Domenic Panuccio and David Roach, as ever, gives a consummate performance, in this case as the other author, J.M. Barrie. Finally, Laurence Croft effectively fills the bill as three further characters crucial to the lives of Peter and Alice.
In the end of the day, it is a sad play.
At about 90 minutes without interval, it hits its straps towards the end when there is a little more fire in the script and in the bellies of the characters.
John Logan has researched his subject well and while everyone knows of Peter and Alice, the embellishments and complexities of their lives as non-fiction have touched us little. So the whole meditation is a nice juicy idea which needs just a spark of further pace to give it the richness it deserves.
Samela Harris
When: 21 to 30 Aug
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
