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Edmonton Journal

Fringe Review: The Peter Pan Cometh

Article content Stage 4 — Walterdale Theatre (10322 83 Ave.) Article content Following the truly smart and breathlessly executed pattern of last year's Who's Afraid of Winnie the Pooh, Minneapolis' Clevername Theatre this time walks Disney's Peter Pan off the plank into the gaping jaws of The Ice Man Cometh — Eugene O'Neill's harrowing 1939 stage drama about a dismal crew of flophouse alcoholics dealing with the supposed success of one of their ilk going straight and embracing sobriety. Article content Article content Last year's Pooh is this year's Captain Hook, Thomas Buan once again roaring his hyper-articulate cravings for oblivion alongside a pixie-dust addicted, one-shoed Smee (Alec Berchem) and guilt-wracked, Lost-Boys-dooming Tinkerbell (Isabelle Hopewell), generally called Tinkbird during the play and seemingly forgotten by Peter Pan (Nick Hill) as he glides back into the purgatorial Neverland on his roller-sneakers. Article content Article content Borrowing heavily from O'Neill's highly articulate dialogue and relentless interpersonal friction, I will suggest at least a passing familiarity with the two pools of source material — the words hit harder if you fathom the ultimate tragedy of Peter and Wendy or have a sense of how the return of Hickey makes the flophouse gang take long looks in the tarnished mirror. Article content But superimposing Pan onto Hickey, now embracing growing up and forgetting your silly dreams of being a child forever, is just the sort of brilliant inversion it's now safe to say you can expect from the company, a whirling storm of wailing and death — or even worse, life going on — finding this a perfect antidote to the derpy escapism of classic Disney. Article content