PETER PAN Lookingglass Theatre Company
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Two years later Barrie published his masterpiece, the children’s play Peter Pan, in which Peter is about ten years old—perpetually poised on the brink of puberty. It was adapted into a novel, initially called Peter and Wendy, in 1911.
With Smee turned into a mother, Peter’s nemesis, Captain Hook, is all the more emphatically a terrifying father figure. As in the original, Hook fears being devoured by a crocodile that has a loudly ticking clock in its stomach. Rather than portray the croc onstage, Dehnert announces its presence with echoing pulses while spotlighting Hook—driving home the fact that the ticktock of the croc clock is a metaphor for time. Hook is revealed as Barrie himself, envious of Peter’s eternal youth. Barrie’s Peter Pan climaxes with Peter kicking Hook into the croc’s jaws during a swordfight; here Hook willingly submits to his fate in a final acceptance of mortality.
