He is the boy who never grew up, from a children’s play that’s never grown old. “He” is Peter Pan, the flying sprite of Scottish writer J.M. Barrie’s beloved play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, which first appeared onstage in London in 1904.
Only a few internationally popular children’s plays have appeared onstage repeatedly over the years—The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland come to mind. This article explores the story of Peter Pan and its appeal to kids and grown-ups alike.
Barrie and “The Five” Llewelyn Davies Boys
As dramatized in the 2004 film Finding Neverland (itself drawn from a 1990 play by Allan Knee), Barrie’s literary inspiration took wing from his peculiarly close friendship with the children of Sylvia and Arthur Llewelyn Davies, whom he first encountered in 1897 during his regular strolls in London’s Kensington Gardens. Aided by his sidekick St. Bernard, Porthos, Barrie cultivated relationships with not only the three (later five) Davies boys, but also Sylvia, whom he most almost certainly was smitten with and wished to marry. Shy, slight, almost elfin in appearance, Barrie entranced the boys with his storytelling, tricks, and games, but most roundly when they took part in his orchestrated episodes of do-or-die pirate make-believe (“Avast, yo ho, a-pirating we go!”).
Space doesn’t permit elaboration on the still-simmering controversies surrounding Barrie’s forged serpentine ties to the Davies family, but allegations of sexual impropriety have never been supported. That, of course, has not stopped gossip and speculation over the past century. Indeed, if there was ever a stranger-than-fiction example of the “plot thickens,” it’s the through-line of the convoluted, some say cursed, Barrie-Davies relationship, which over time included multiple too-real tragedies, from the untimely deaths of Arthur (1907), Sylvia (1910), and several of the grown boys, to the 1960 suicide of another. It should be added that a number of biographers have deemed Barrie exploitative or at the least reckless in his dealings with the Davies family.
Peter, Hook, the Croc, and the Clock
For mature readers and playgoers, such downcast events crashing in from the “grown-up” world lend Peter Pan a double-edge sword, coated with shimmering fairy dust on one side and the darker, grimier facts of life on the other. Astute observers will note that, other than Peter himself, Captain Hook’s most fervent foe is a crocodile that previously gobbled up Hook’s right arm after Peter lopped it off in a sword fight and tossed it to him. That crocodile is never too far away from Hook on Neverland, circling and waiting to wolf down the rest of him. And for timeless symbols of mortality, few are more striking than the clock the crocodile has also swallowed, which loudly and relentlessly counts down Hook’s life whenever the reptile swims near.
By living forever in Neverland where he can play to his heart’s content, Peter just says no to adult jobs, humdrum responsibilities, aging, and, naturally (or unnaturally), death. Careful readers of either the Peter Pan play or the accompanying novel (written in 1911) can’t help but note that the author’s defiantly pre-adolescent hero also flies from any notion of budding sexuality, except for a chaste kiss or two from Wendy, his pretend mother on loan from London. (Literary fun fact: Barrie conjured up the soon-to-be-trendy “Wendy” name expressly for this work.)
He Came in Through the Bedroom Window
It’s Wendy, along with her two younger brothers, whom Barrie introduces in Act I as the Darling children, who are asleep in their beds when Peter makes his famed entrance via an open third-story window. He’s preceded by a wee fairy girl named Tinker Bell. This is Peter’s second visit to the nursery; he is returning to retrieve his shadow, which had torn off on his hasty exit while pursued by Nana, an uncannily talented dog who minds the children.
From here Barrie invites audiences to leap headfirst into a place open to dreams, adventures, mermaids, buccaneers, and amazing new worlds where children can fly! In the novel version especially, Barrie makes clear his project to free minds from the traps of an adult world circumscribed by dreary earthbound “reality.” Each night, the loving but dour Mrs. Darling makes sure to “tidy up” her children’s minds, setting them on the straight and narrow in time for morning while eliminating the odd “zigzags” that might get them in trouble. But it’s exactly those wandering zigzags that Peter represents, leading the children to an exotic land of possibility and wonder.
When Mr. and Mrs. Darling go out for the night, the children go with Peter to Neverland, flying all the way, courtesy of a handful or two of fairy dust mixed with a few “lovely wonderful thoughts.” Where is Neverland exactly, they ask. In one of Barrie’s celebrated lines, Peter pipes in, “Second to the right, and then straight on till morning.”
Mother and Father Figures
Of course, the very name of “Pan” suggests the mischievous forest god of Greek myth fond of chasing nymphs in the wild. Yet Peter’s only plan for Wendy is for her to adopt the role of mother for him and his Neverland charges, the six or so Lost Boys, including Nibs, Tootles, and Slightly. The island is populated with a motley crew of dramatis personae, from the malevolent Hook and his salty sailors, a tribe of Indians, and a school of haughty mermaids in the lagoon. Chief among the Indians is the lovely Tiger Lilly, whom Peter cleverly frees from the clutches of Hook’s henchmen. A Freudian interpretation of the Hook/Peter dynamic as a veiled father/son struggle is not only historically appropriate considering Barrie’s era, but is baked into the stage version now, given that traditionally Mr. Darling and Hook are played by the same actor.
Peter is also fond of imitating Hook’s voice, both for his own amusement and to bedevil the pirate captain into fits. Peter always has choice words for his arch adversary. During one of their duels, a bewildered Hook asks Peter, “Who and what art thou?” Comes Peter’s answer: “I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of his egg.” As rambunctious and flighty as Peter is, he also has a philosophical side, though it hardly slows him down. Briefly contemplating his own demise while marooned on a sinking rock, he courageously wonders to himself, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
Dating back to the play’s triumphant London opening, an even more unique theatrical tradition is the “ladies first” casting when it comes to the lead. While boys have portrayed Peter over the decades, typically marquee actresses have flown through the air and carried the stage and screen shows with the greatest of ease. The list of actresses includes the U.S. stage’s legendary Maude Adams, Hollywood’s Betty Bronson (picked by Barrie himself) in a silent 1924 version, Mary Martin and Jean Arthur (at nearly 50!) on Broadway in the 1950s, and Sandy Duncan and Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby in more recent decades. In director Steven Spielberg’s 1991 retelling, Hook, Robin Williams is a workaholic adult Peter who returns to Neverland to find, at least figuratively, that youth and joy he lost (or sold).
Do You Believe In Fairies?
And what, we might ask, of tiny Tinker Bell, who is wished back to life through the wizardry of audience participation after she heroically drinks the poison Hook meant for Peter? Atoning for the jealousy that earlier piqued her to trick the lost boys into downing “the Wendy” with an arrow, Tinker Bell saves Peter, who in turn breaks the phantom “fourth wall” that separates Neverland from the audience. First he asks, “Do you believe in fairies?” then, “If you believe, clap your hands!” Now it never fails that most clap, which miraculously resurrects Tinker Bell so that she and Peter can rescue Wendy from Hook as the action flies to Act V.
Like many of the great fairy tales, Barrie’s doesn’t drop its final curtain on a clichéd “happy ever after” ending. Wendy and her brothers (avast, spoiler warning!) do eventually return home, though this is hardly applauded by either Barrie or Peter. Not only has Peter lost his make-believe mother (and any potential of a more “evolved” relationship) but Wendy is back on the grown-up track, her own internal clock ticking away. As she ages she will slowly forget how to fly, literally and perhaps—perish the thought—figuratively. She has, however, agreed to return to Neverland once a year for a bit of housekeeping around Peter’s underground home, that is, if he remembers to come back and get her. Like many a carefree “lost boy” (or girl), Peter lives in the eternal present, neither haunted by the past nor much bothered by the future. Perhaps this is his secret for staying young?
