Everyone knows the story of Peter Pan. How he fights Captain Hook and the pirates to save Wendy. What most people don’t know is that the beloved characters of Neverland are all dead.
In the play Peter/Wendy, Peter Pan (Spencer Wickwire) is searching for his shadow in the bedroom of Wendy Darling (Hailey Linnell). Wendy helps Peter re-attach his shadow that was left in the room. Peter tells Wendy about the fairies that he knows and begins looking around the room for his fairy Tinker Bell (Lauren Watson) who he shut in a drawer. Peter convinces Wendy to go with him to Neverland where he lives. While in Neverland, Wendy meets Tiger Lily (Halle Hinton) and the lost boys (Aspen Starr, Charlie Cullum, Rylan Jensen, Caidyn Watson, and Kelsi Tegenkamp) who are a part of Peter’s crew. Then she gets taken by Captain Hook (Jacob Rudloff), his sidekick Smee (Toby Schweitzer), and the band of pirates (Grace Chladek, Rider Aden, Ian Klug, and Aj Sullivan). Peter takes his friends to go fight the pirates and overtake them, making Peter the new captain. Wendy longs to go home and Peter lets her. Wendy takes the two main lost boys with her (Aspen Starr and Charlie Cullum) and Tiger Lily guides them. When Wendy arrives home she learns the window to her bedroom is shut and she can’t get back inside to her parents. This is because Wendy is now dead.
While performing this show, the actors were challenged with getting a strong message across to the audience. They must portray the fact that their characters are dead. In taking on the role of Peter Pan, Spencer Wickwire played a character that was happy and energetic and managed to convey this while also showing that the character was dead.
“I just played up any lines that I had that came across,” Wickwire said. “Like when I say towards the end of the show, I have a line that says James Hook thou not holy and unheroic figure farewell, to die, well really is the greatest adventure.”
When Wickwire said this line, he made sure to annunciate the certain words that brought up the concept of the characters being dead. Since Peter Pan is a happy character it was especially challenging to do this, but simple things such as making these words more known really helped convey this. It was even more challenging for Hailey Linnell to portray this in the part of Wendy.
“I think I really brought the concept across at the last dance that we did,” Linnell said. “And also at the end of the show when I was looking out to see all the stars to show that Wendy is really dead.”
This was difficult because Wendy talks about having a daughter later in the show, but it is metaphorical.
“Wendy’s daughter Jane, exists in some versions, but in this one she is talked about to explain how the characters of Neverland continue through all time. Jane becomes the next Wendy and she also has a daughter named Margret who continues this,” Linnell said.
Another challenge was knowing whether the audience noticed their efforts or not. The show was very popular in attendance but the question is, did they really get the message? In most versions of the story, Wendy goes back home to Neverland. In this one however, she is unable to return home. This was supposed to show Wendy was dead when she couldn’t get through the window.
“I feel like it was something you really had to look into,” Wickwire said. “When I talked to people who did watch the show, they said they only got it if they already knew the story of Peter Pan. The cast was complemented by several people on their performance but not a lot understood the true meaning.
“I heard that some people who got it had to explain it to other people,” Linnell said. “I think we did a good job. We were able to show it in all of our special ways.”
