The Peter Pan Myth, Reinvented

The new musical theater production Finding Neverland, which opened to a sold-out house at the American Repertory Theater on August 13, extends the century-old mythology of Peter Pan. The saga of the boy who would not grow up, with its crocodiles, Captain Hook, and the fairy Tinker Bell, began onstage with the play Peter Pan, which opened in London in 1904. The ageless boy has been reincarnated countless times since, in a Disney film in 1953, on the Broadway stage with Mary Martin as Peter in 1954, by Stephen Spielberg in the 1991 movie Hook. In 2004, the film Finding Neverland mixed Pan’s story with that of his creator, Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie (1860-1937), played by Johnny Depp. The ART production—with a new score by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, book by James Graham, and direction by Tony-award winning Diane Paulus, the company’s artistic director—received an enthusiastic reception at the Loeb Drama Center, where it will run through September 28. It is scheduled to open on Broadway next March. (Finding Neverland also represents the first venture as a lead producer in theater for the distinguished film producer Harvey Weinstein, whose movies have won several Academy Awards, including the Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love.)