I tuned in–with my Twitter feed, of course. Maybe not as much fun as Sound of Music, but a damned good time. Oh, the Walken. The 20something Lost Boys. The urge to hand Wendy “He’s Just Not That into You.” And the crocodile…that crocodile.
Wonder what they’ll do next Christmas?
Cheesy but entertaining. Walken was so … Walken. Fun to see Christian Borle. Loved the dancing, by the pirates and everyone else – I can definitely forgive casting the lost boys so old to get those dancers.
Yeah, those lost boys must have fallen out of a carriage because they were drunk coming home from a frat party.
And I was starting to find it creepy that Wendy, Tink and Tiger Lilly were so hung up on a boy who was going to be under the age of consent FOREVER.
I can’t verify the source, but according to news my wife saw online last night, it’s The Music Man.
Justin Bieber as Harold Hill, anyone? 
(My wife is hoping for Hugh Jackman, but then - who isn’t?)
Didn’t see it – we were all busy last night.
Pepper Mill told me that they decided that Christopher Walken wouldn’t play the father, as well as Captain Hook (as is usual not only in productions of the musical, but in other movie adaptations) because they thought he was too old.
Evil-minded me, I couldn’t help but think that maybe:
…people would recall his role in Pulp Fiction and wonder about how that watch really DID end up inside the crocodile
I caught the butt-end of it.
I thought Walken was hilarious since he was basically Walken as Walken playing Hook. I can’t remember how the story goes (and I’ve never seen the Disney cartoon) but didn’t Peter get really mad at Wendy for growing up? or not understand it or something? I thought it didn’t have as happy of an ending as the show did.
Were they singing live? It didn’t seem like they were.
What was up with Wendy? She looked like she was 42 years old and her eyes were about 6 inches sunk into her skull.
Best part of the night was the ending when Hook was saying by to everyone, and the gator came onto the ship and he yelled “Hold on! I’m not there yet” and gator put his hands up like “OK OK I’m sorry man”.
Christopher Walken was awful. He sleepwalked (sleepwalken?) through the role and acted as though he was bored by the whole affair, even obviously forgetting his lines.
His “dancing” was worse than mine; most of the time he just stood stock still as everyone else danced around him and the few steps he showed off were high school musical stuff – and he did them with less life than a corpse. He was clearly the wrong actor for the part, and possibly the worst Hook to perform in a professional production.
It was a big mistake not having him play Mr Darling – it’s an important part of the play for the same actor to play both roles – but I think they knew he’d never be able to pull it off. Mr. Darling doubled as Smee, which didn’t have any resonance, especially since it wasn’t obvious it was the same actor. Worrying about realism was absolutely ridiculous here.*
Allison Williams was fairly good in the early going. I think the show needed someone to be more than just fairly good, though, since Hook was so bad. Peter Pan has to sparkle and Williams did not. The “clap if you believe in fairies” bit seemed rushed (but that may just be the script, which isn’t a particularly great one).
The wires were visible, but that can’t be criticized. It’s not technically possible to make them invisible given the fact it’s a live performance, the cameras are with 10 feet of the actors, and people watch in hi-def. (You can spot them in stage shows from the balcony). The sets were wonderful and the dancing (except for Walken) was first-class. Having a live dog for Nana worked pretty well, too.
*People break into song on an obvious stage set, and it’s a musical about a boy who never grows up, can fly, and lives in Neverland. There’s nothing the least bit realistic about the play, so why worry about it?
We lost interest two-thirds of the way through.
From what I saw: Allison Williams was fantastic as flying lesbian Eddie Redmayne, Walken not only phoned it in but had a slow connection, and Christian Borle (whose Broadway superstardom I don’t understand) went armless to show off his biceps. I thought it was meh with some good homoeroticism, but I have to admit PETER PAN has never been a favorite of mine in any of its incarnations.
One thing I did want to mention though was the camera work was fantastic.
They were able to seamlessly break from camera to camera without ever actually seeing the next camera.
Also fantastic steadycam work with their long tracking shots
Peter Pan is pretty fuckin creepy in general.
His relationships with girls consists of a girlfriend/mom, psycho ex and ethnic fetish.
The character is nearly always played by an adult woman, which gives him a weird androgynous quality.
Not to mention Pan kind of acts like a narcissistic sociopath.
It says a lot that Christopher Walken was the least creepy thing about Pan.
Did this adaptation follow more of the Disney movie (I assume all the songs were from the Disney movie?) or the book?
Because the whole thing seemed waaaaay more dark and “adult” than I remember it. I mean with all of the description of how and why everyone should be killed.
Maybe it’s because I have nieces and they are 3 and 5. I don’t think it’s appropriate for them. Maybe if they were 10 I’d not have noticed as much.
The Wal Mart commercials with the family were weird. At one point, the boys find some fancy light-up bows with Nerf arrows and Melissa-Joan Heart is all “Just like the one Wendy was shot with!”
We know by that time that Wendy was ok but it seemed so awkward to me! Like, you don’t admit that toy weapons are replicas of things used to shoot people. At least, not the good guy. Maybe it woulda worked if it was used to shoot someone wicked, but they coulda said “Just like Tigerlilly’s tribe!”
Yeah, I was always bothered by Tink being an attempted murderer. Something generally ignored by the Fairies of Pixie Hollow.
I didn’t see it, but I assume from what I’ve seen on ads that this uses the script and music of the stage play that Mary Martin made famous – emphatically NOT the Disney version, or the Disney songs. “Don’t wanna grow up” rather than “I can fly!”
I thought Allison Williams did a very good job at Peter Pan… except I was sad for her that she messed up the most famous line. Where does Peter Pan live? Second STAR to the right, and straight on 'til morning.
I was pretty disappointed in Christopher Walken, though. I thought he’d be great in the role. But he was soooo monotone… I know that’s his thing, but usually he can convay some emotion as well. Here, though, there was no evil glee, no angry rants, no expression at all. And his dancing… I know he’s an old man, but his dancing was more, well, old man shuffle than Fatboy Slim. He really stood out among the other outstanding performers on stage. His singing was fine, but he couldn’t project as much as needed and so he was often hard to hear. They needed to mic him better or something.
True! The camera was often as much part of the chorography as the dancers. There was one part where the camera came in among the dancers, and they danced around it as the camera spun around… I had to rewind and slow motion because I thought for sure there was no way that could pull that off without showing other crew or backstage, but nope, I saw nothing. Pretty impressive.
Wow. I… completely agree with you. We only watched a little bit. The show is just all kinds of lousy, with terrible, uninteresting songs.
Although Borle was OK in the recent concert Sweeney Todd.
[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Did this adaptation follow more of the Disney movie (I assume all the songs were from the Disney movie?) or the book?
[/QUOTE]
The original work is a play (1904, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up); the story was published as a novel, Peter and Wendy, in 1911. Last night’s, erm, whatever that was, is based on the 1954 musical.
The real original work was part of another book, which was later published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, and is very different from either the play or the later book. This preceded even the 1904 play. It’s also very different from all later versions.
I had it on in the background while I was doing other things. I’ve never seen any presentation of it nor read the book, though obviously we all know the basic story.
Mostly I just wanted to see Mr. Walken. He did not look good.
What is amazing to me is that it is such a long lived, beloved production. I found the songs to be unmemorable at best and more often annoying. I’ve seen Alison Williams on talk shows and she seems lovely, but there was nothing endearing about her as Peter Pan.
I’ve no way to judge if last night’s performance did the play justice and I’m not likely to find out since after watching this I would never want to see *Peter Pan *live
Well, he’s 71 and he’s not accustomed to live performance. (I gather that most of the personnel involved, with the exception of Allison Williams, are old Broadway hands). I’m willing to cut him some slack.
Walken was a marvelous dancer; I’d recommend the movie of *Pennies From Heaven *(the 1981 Steve Martin version), in which he’s amazing.
As others have said, this new Peter Pan was a technical triumph–the camera work and the flying certainly worked well. And the dancing was good. I can see why the production company’s choice for their next project is The Music Man: it offers lots of numbers that professional dancers can enhance (which wasn’t really the case with The Sound of Music).
…What did Williams say instead of “second star to the right…”…? (I missed bits of the first two hours.)
My wife was watching it … I was half-watching it while playing around on the internet. I usually enjoy musicals, so the fact it didn’t pull me in says something.
I’m going to go with Allison Williams did a passable job as Peter Pan, but there were some very sour notes that reverberated loud to me. The “Second Star” is one, but the other really famous line - “To die would be an awfully big adventure” - seemed really, really flat and rushed to me. If I recall, in the live show it’s the line that ends the first act, so it’s supposed to echo through the intermission (or in this case a commercial). It just seemed really rushed and really flat.
Walken’s dancing struck me as what you do with an actor who’s too old to move around much and you’re afraid they’re going to break a hip or something. You see it with some of Betty White’s more recent work, for example - there’s no real moving around the scene, the actor just stays put or shuffles a little bit. That’s what Walken seemed to be doing to me last night and it was jarring.
I will say - and commented to my wife in the middle of it - that the production values and camera work were very, very good.
As was the orchestra… but one thing we couldn’t figure out - anyone know if that was a live orchestra off-camera, or was the music piped in?