Faithful interpretations of JM Barrie are not what you expect at the panto. Indeed, anyone looking for the playwright's troubling contemplation of the passage of time should search elsewhere. Yet what's surprising about this pacy, confident and very funny show is just how much of the original story it gets in.
Although the star casting of Allan Stewart and Andy Gray gives new prominence to characters called Mr and Mrs Smee (childminders with apparent licence to roam Neverland as they please), Ed Curtis's production never loses sight of the dramatic conflict that sets children against pirate – and pirate against crocodile.
Not only does Grant Stott make a magnificently baroque Captain Hook, carrying much more of the show than you'd expect of a pantomime villain, but his adversaries, led by Daniel Healy's Peter Pan, Shona White's Tinkerbell and Maggie Lynne's Wendy, demonstrate real grit, not to mention the ability to fly, fight and belt out the pop songs.
Where other festive shows pay lip service to the forces of darkness, this one is distressing at the moment of Tinkerbell's demise, and the spectacular arrival of the Hook-baiting crocodile is alarming. That makes the comic set-pieces by Stewart and Gray all the more welcome, and the two headliners are in breathtaking form. Stewart is the most infectiously good-humoured of dames, revelling in the silliness without ever doubting the urgency of the narrative. He convinces throughout, whether singing a ukulele lullaby or sending up Adele.
Gray, meanwhile, displays the innocence of Stan Laurel and the explosive delivery of Eric Morecambe. Throw in Gray's anarchic taste for danger and ability to generate hilarity from a single word ("balloon") and you are in the presence of panto greatness.
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