The musical “Peter Pan” is eternally simple and kid friendly. Now an updated and revamped new touring version, which opened at Segerstrom Center on Tuesday, Aug. 6, presents the show through a very modern lens.
First off, don’t panic! While there’s been tinkering with the book that includes a song replacement, Peter Pan still aims to be a boy forever. Captain Hook still sneeringly waits in Neverland to conquer the Lost Boys. And the young audience is still summoned at the crucial moment to keep Tinker Bell alive.
But where it was traditionally an older actress flying around on the guy wires, we now have a 17-year-old male — a skillful actor to boot — teaching the Darling family kids how to fly.
And while the original setting was Victorian London, now the family home is set in an American present, with a newly fashioned book reframing some of the characters and values to reflect current sensibilities.
More about the — quite enjoyable — acting in a bit, but the thematic updating is what’s notable in a well-sung, well-danced and well-flown production.
In revamping the book, playwright Larissa FastHorse looked with a contemporary eye, especially the portrayals of some supplementary roles and primary female characters.
Examples of these shifts appear in the first scene.As the show starts, the eldest Darling child Wendy is fretting on how she will be able to get to medical school. Meanwhile, the older son John (alas, his British top hat is gone) is working on a replica model of a Cahokia People’s settlement.
Later, FastHorse replaces the show’s “Indians” with a conglomerate tribe of indigenous peoples who have come to Neverland as the only ones left from their cultures.
Additionally, the two primary female characters Wendy and Tiger Lily each have more elevated presences, particularly as animated parts of the action elements. The two also now share a scene where they bond and defuse the disputes between the Lost Boys and Tiger Lily’s followers.
This funds a new number that replaces the song “Ugg-a-Wugg.” It has led to the big, rousing new dance-driven first act ending number “Friends Forever.”
While this superficial explanation might make it sound that a family-friendly show has become a didactic polemic, both FastHorse and director Lonny Price have worked surgically and skillfully so that the moves feel organic and the show plays at an energetic pace.
The key to “Peter Pan” remains the performances from the two showiest leads which make this version tick (speaking of ticking: the ominous crocodile which munches off all five of Hook’s left fingers and then swallows a clock is still, er, on hand).
Nolan Almeida as Peter and Cody Garcia as Captain Hook are just as dandy as we could hope these dominating rivals to be.
What’s interesting and a bit revelatory about Almeida’s Peter isn’t so much we have a male playing a boy, but that we get the animating energy and bravado of an age-appropriate teen who can act.
From the first time he flies in the Darling window, a lovely lighting effect accented by glittering pixie dust, Almeida inhabits Peter with crackling energy.
With his mop of curly hair and his derring-do eagerness for sword fighting half a dozen baddies at a time, Almeida checks boxes for what makes for a fun Peter Pan.
But, better, is Almeida’s ability to navigate the inner contrariness of Peter, showing us the workings of the boy’s moods as he is buffeted about emotionally by internal struggles.
Peter’s primary nature, of course, is found in the willful defiance when he and his Lost Boys sing “I Won’t Grow Up.” In some ways, though, a more revealing solo for the character comes in the second act with “When I Went Home,” in which Peter plaintively reveals his shadowy past experience of being shunned in his earliest years.
Further complicating the character is a child’s desire to gain and exercise power, and the loss of childhood innocence that comes when grappling with that adult goal.
Almeida is effective at peeling away and showing these inner layers. There are instances where the actor almost involuntarily clenches his fists so that they seem to quiver in anguish and frustration as he manifests the struggle between his true nature and the complications of a life he didn’t choose.
Meantime, in his sworn adversary we get a marvelous turn from Garcia as the dastardly Hook.
This is, happily, not a pirate king of the “aargh” school. Instead, Garcia — who does double duty as Mr. Darling — is an elegant despot with a sneering brogue used to engaging effect in both conniving up dastardly plans to defeat arch-enemy Peter and deliciously belittling anyone who is around.
What elevates the performance is Garcia’s physicality in the role. He’s tall, certainly compared to most of the cast, and adroit at everything from elegant and sweeping gestures to buckling all his moves and reactions with a great deal of swash.
The third key character is Wendy, played by Hawa Kamara. Kamara is most convincing in her guise as “The Mother” for the Lost Boys.
She especially does well in her moment designed to provide comic relief for the older generations in the audience.
As chief storyteller in Neverland, and after reciting the plot lines of “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty,” with the inevitable ending of “… and they all lived happily ever after” Wendy fields a request from one of the Lost Boys: “tell us the end of Hamlet.”
Kamara patiently drops in exquisite pauses here, drawing laughs in carefully providing answers to that stumper.
Overall, this “Peter Pan” is a summer pleasure. All ages, and sensibilities, now welcome.
‘Peter Pan’
Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible four).
When: Through Aug. 18; 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m., Sundays.
Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Tickets: $32.77-$157
Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org
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