What do we think of when we hear the name Peter Pan? I would venture this: In our collective memories, Peter Pan continues to be the innocent boy who takes Wendy and her siblings on a unique adventure to the fabulous “Neverland”. A utopian island, a no-mans-land of fairies, pirates, mermaids and the “lost boys”. Here, the impossible can come true if we only believe in it enough! But what if we could no longer see this fantastic world through the eyes of a child and the journey to Neverland became a dystopia? 

Innocent? Not really...

The story of Neverland has been on my mind ever since I started working in the theatre. My fascination with the story has remained the same but my view of the content and the motifs has changed. Today, Peter Pan is a reckoning with one’s own childhood, the wishes and expectations for what we were supposed to become once we “were all grown up”.

I read J.M. Barrie‘s story as a strategy for coping with the pain of growing up and the concomitant loss of childhood. To me, the painful recognition of the transiency of things and the finite nature of our own lives is what distinguishes being a child from being an adult. Time becomes a limiting factor. And death becomes the final, unpredictable component, the uncertainty that we are fanatically trying to control, to rule, in the archaic desire for immortality. But no matter how much we cling to it, time is ticking relentlessly, and life marches menacingly towards its end with sure steps: “To die would be an awfully big adventure”.  

Hedonistic nightmare

Peter Pan decides to never grow up and elevates himself to a godlike and immortal being. He invents “Neverland” for his purposes. No one ever grows old on this island, and a hedonistic dream comes true. But Peter can only exist as long as there are people who believe in him and are ready to give up everything for him. Wendy allows herself to be allured. She leaves her safe home, learns to fly and follows Pan to Neverland.

The chosen who are permitted to follow him there forget everything as soon as they enter this magic world. The only thing that counts is living in the Here and Now, in this very moment. No responsibilities, no consequences, only adventures. Day after day!

What seems heavenly at first soon turns into a dystopian nightmare: Snarling with milk teeth, Peter Pan is a fanatic and uncompromising ruler, like a god of his fictitious kingdom. Once you have set foot on this island you must stay forever and submit to his rules. The most important one is: Never grow up!

Whoever defies this command or wants to leave the island is mercilessly punished. And so this hedonistic bath in the fountain of eternal youth transforms inexorably into a dance on the volcano’s edge. The characters carry us away to their personal Neverland, to Wasteland. A place where the nightmare becomes reality and Peter, Wendy, Tinkerbell, the lost boys, Captain Hook and the pirates have to fight for survival in equal measure, now that they have recognised their own finiteness.