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Theatre: Mad about the boy: Why are we so fixated by the story of a child who never grows up? Lyn Gardner on the dark side of Peter Pan
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Theatre: Mad about the boy: Why are we so fixated by the story of a child who never grows up? Lyn Gardner on the dark side of Peter Pan
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Newspaper Article
Theatre: Mad about the boy: Why are we so fixated by the story of a child who never grows up? Lyn Gardner on the dark side of Peter Pan
2002
Overview
[Peter Pan] is undoubtedly one of the greatest plays of the past century. Even Peter Llewellyn Davies, the second son of the young family of five boys that Barrie befriended, and a man with more cause than most to loathe Peter Pan, called it \"that terrible masterpiece\". Llewellyn Davies was teased and haunted all his life for being the original model for Peter Pan; at the age of 63, he threw himself under a train at London's Sloane Square station. Although it seems unimaginable now, the tale of Peter Pan didn't begin as a narrative for children. The character first appears in Barrie's 1902 novel for adults, The Little White Bird, an account of the interest taken in a small boy called David by a wealthy childless writer, who takes the child for walks in Kensington Gardens and tells him stories about a character called Peter Pan. David was the name of Barrie's elder brother, who died in a skating accident aged 13 and so became trapped in eternal youth. Barrie tried hard to replace David in his devastated mother's affections, even going as far as wearing his dead brother's clothes. Perhaps, though, Peter Pan endures because of the central figure of Peter himself, the boy who refuses to grow up. He made Edwardian men cheer, but in an age where youth is prized, adolescence officially lasts until the age of 35, children grow up but refuse to leave home, and regular botox injections and plastic surgery can leave you with a face as smooth as a baby's, the notion of eternal youth now appeals to both sexes. Yet that is an appalling idea. At best, a child who never grows up is - like David Barrie or the fourth Llewellyn Davies child, Michael, who drowned aged 21 in what was believed to be a suicide pact with his best friend - a dead child. At worst, he or she is frozen, unable to achieve independence and lose either their sexual or emotional virginity. \"No one must ever touch me,\" declares Peter, surely one of the most tragic statements in the whole of English drama. Adults often respond to Peter Pan as being about their own loss of innocence, when in fact it is about its deliberate retention. That is infinitely more twisted and sad.
Publisher
Guardian News & Media Limited
Subject
