How do you recover from an enchanted childhood? In the early 20th century, a generation of young men, captivated by JM Barrie's Peter Pan, went from the magic and mock heroics of Neverland to the muddy trenches of Flanders. Death bore little resemblance to Peter's predicted "awfully big adventure", as the soldiers lived out a bloody nightmare. Following in the wake of other Peter Pan-inspired theatrics, including Peter and Alice and Finding Neverland, Phil Willmott's poignant musical is full of good ideas – in fact, there are too many of them.
George Llewelyn Davies, the eldest son of the family adopted by Barrie, was shot dead at Saint Eloi in 1915, reputedly carrying a copy of Peter Pan in his pocket. Framed as a fantasy dreamed by Llewelyn Davies on the eve of his death, Lost Boy reunites a grown-up Wendy, still fixated on the boyish charmer of Neverland, with Tootles and co, now a bunch of married Edwardian child-men. The careless, heartless Pan is transformed from fantasy figure to British army general blithely sending young men to their deaths.
There are some fantastic and fantastical touches: John, hooked on the thrill of flying, has become a gay trapeze artist, and Tinkerbell is a streetwalker whose heart is too small for her body. The darkness of the show's vision is compelling and the cast attack the material with gusto. But the results are muted since the stage is overcrowded with people and competing stories, and a surfeit of clever ideas fail to find an emotional outlet. Making Michael a follower of Jung is witty, but it diverts attention from the show's exploration of what it means to grow up and become a man.
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