Peter Pan Live!

...but don't do it halfway in between. Peter Pan the musical has survived all sorts of "interpretations" over the years, starting back in the 1950s. Peter Pan has traditionally been played by a woman. It doesn't matter why since audiences apparently have accepted it. But if you're going to update the show, don't use a female. It doesn't work any more. And the rest of the young cast doesn't need to be too old any more either. There are plenty of wildly talented kids and teens who could have pulled this off. Then there is the music. The original score was a mish-mash of contributions by a variety of people (not an uncommon practice in those days), so adding songs to this version could have worked. It doesn't primarily because the added music, while coming from the same era, doesn't fit the original music's style. In the same way, the updated/added dialogue sounds out of place with the more traditional dialogue. Interesting casting/directing decisions: Young Allison Williams was acceptable as Peter, given the women-playing-boys tradition. After all, the beloved Mary Martin was already over 40 when she did it. Christopher Walken as Hook for some reason was playing the role as a cross between RuPaul and Fu Manchu - and a tired one at that. Since he began his career as a song-and-dance man on Broadway, this was strange choice. The very obviously "chorus boys" as the Lost Boys and the barely-clothed Indian braves, all doing a lot of what can only be described as prancing around, probably would have fit the 50s interpretation, but it looked very weird here. The pirates also had some very un-pirate-like dancing. Taylor Louderman sings beautifully, and she almost gets away with being Wendy, except that she is - ahem - rather well-developed. This makes her attraction to the obviously female Peter disconcerting. A younger Wendy can pull this off; it's just kind of skanky here. The use of a real dog as Nana robbed the show of Nana's lovely humorous and bittersweet moments. The narration was okay but seemed needlessly intrusive. The settings were very cartoonish. Again, this would have worked with a 50s interpretation; updated, they should have been more substantial. In short, the problems with Peter Pan Live! came with the original concept - or lack of one. Are you doing this as originally conceived, or are you doing it more modern? The producers never made up their minds, and it looks like it.

Fell asleep twice last night watching this. Now, having spent several painful hours forcing myself to get through it all, I understand why I couldn't force myself to fight the sleep. Ms. Williams turns out to be an excellent singer, but she doesn't know what to do with her hands while she's singing and so keeps repeating the same motions over and over. It was so annoying. Walken is fine, perhaps a bit disappointing. Was this production meant to be seen by adults only? I have to wonder why it was shown on a school night and starting so late at 8 pm at that. Three hours is way too long for this. It was too long between songs and I saw no acting worth watching. I believe I was actually in pain, forcing myself to see it through to the end. One more complaint: why, on earth was the child, Wendy's, gown untied to show just a bit of pubescent cleavage? Remember her father saying she was almost grown-up? Why purposely present children this way? A disgrace for certain.

The very notion of staging a live version of the Broadway musical version of Peter Pan for TV in this day and age was enough to generate publicity. Live TV is a phenomenon ripe for disaster and people knew well in advance that they were going to see a disaster.

They got that cheese-fest and substantially more in a horrific broadcast that was like sitting through three hours of a middle school play your kid isn't in. 'Peter Pan Live' makes Jersey Shore look like Masterpiece Theater.

The culprit in all this is the network NBC who evidently gambled they could get ratings just by staging an epic debacle that people would watch with the same fascination of rubber-neckers slowing down to check out a car wreck.

The sets were cheap. The make-up and costuming were atrocious. The acting was appalling throughout with performers seemingly always thrown out of rhythm by each other. The singing looked lip-synched in parts. The choreography was very often painfully out of synch.

Alison Williams in the title role kept flying up and back down again with obvious cables tied to her. Props kept falling and the camera crew appeared rattled and confused. It actually looked unsafe - like the cables could have broken leaving the star at the mercy of gravity.

Christopher Walken as Captain Hook walked through his performance injecting about as much personality as a wax museum sculpture and looked like he was reading every one of his lines off a teleprompter.

The low point came with a lackadaisically mimed sword fight between Pan and Hook near the end. The cast seemed tired at that point and beyond caring what the disaster looked like.

I saw this with my mom tonight. She of course loves the old songs (original to the productions in her days) so she has a lot of nostalgia which carries her through it.

I overall enjoyed it too though,surprisingly. Christopher Walken, as always is really fun to watch. And it was interesting to see a live stage production turned into a DVD / movie to watch at home. I think they did manage to capture some of the live magic.

I wasn't a huge fan of the girl playing Peter Pan, but not sure if that's her fault or how she was directed. She didn't ruin it though, she just felt a little flat or something. The other actors did a better job of conveying emotions.

I really wanted to like this. I thought that "The Sound of Music" was better than many said it was. This, however, doesn't work at all. Allison Williams is decent in the title role and there are a couple of troopers who make it work, but how Christopher Walken was chosen to play Captain Hook stretches the limits of credulity. He is terrible. He can't dance. He is a nervous wreck. And he can barely sing. Think of all the possibilities. For goodness sake, the put an embarrassed Christian Borle in the role of Smee. It must have killed him to do his usual classy job next to the stiff Walken (by the way I love Christopher Walken). It just never got off the ground. It begins with some decent stuff, but dies on the vine. There is no clean movement through the plot. It is jerky and endless. I wonder if this is the death knell for these productions. If the only reason to do this is the novelty, it may be time to stop. How about some high quality stage productions of some of the classic musicals, only recorded ahead of time.