Until the day before, I had no idea what the play was about and I didn't care, as it starred Judi Dench. Dame Judi is a legend I wouldn't miss, regardless of in what she appeared. Aside from that, there have been more and more confirmed rumors that because of her macular degeneration, this long time actress was going to limit, if not curtail her continued appearances on stage and screen. Those of you who saw the last Bond movie know that her "M" was killed off after many years of her heading MI6 on screen.
As I sat with Denise, Heather and her husband Chris in a converted alley full of restaurants having a mimosa and watching the stage door of the theatre (we wanted to be close) filled with autograph seekers, a young man came out, friendly and content with being sought after. He was slightly bearded, and lightly handsome, but I did not recognize him. I asked the people next to us who he was. He is, I was told with a concomitant lilting excitement that it was Ben Whishaw. "What's he been in", I asked, oblivious to the fact I had indeed seen him, and recently, in that selfsame Bond film, "Skyfall". He is the fresh new "Q", wet behind the ears computer genius. He clearly already has significant fame on the Isle, judging by the hugs and waving pens. Ah, I would soon find out, this was a bit of a Bond reunion engagement, as the writer of the play was the writer of the last Bond film and at least one to come, John Logan.
I still did not know what the relationship of Peter and Alice would be, or who these characters were in the first place. Ir was as it happened the penultimate performance. The play closed that night after a multi month limited run.
Presumably, Alice Hargreaves and Peter Davies really did meet once in the 1930s. She was elderly. He was about 35. In this imagining of what their conversation (and experience) might have been, the model for Alice in Wonderland meeting the model for Peter Pan, there is little happiness, or joy in fantasy. Whether the models were happy children, whether in either a physical or emotional sense they were abused, whether there is any real pleasure in childhood, or adulthood, these seem to be the themes around which Peter and Alice encounter one another, as well as their alter egos and the men, both lonely strange men, it appears, who created them, J.M. Barrie, and Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson).
In the beginning, it seems that Alice is the bitter one and Peter is at peace with his after Pan life. But by the end of the play, it is Alice who seems to have accepted her shadow fame (and real life loss of children in the war) while Peter's troubled family life (early loss of a father who is represented in his dying cancerous days) and inability to find an adult niche (he started the book store in which the two of them meet I believe), leads to his ultimate suicide, as we are told.
I thought it was all done better in the movie with Coral Browne, "Dreamchild", without Peter's involvement. But I didn't hate it, and it was worth everything to find myself sitting in a West End London theatre, applauding the probable last stage work of a great Dame. She received a standing ovation, likely more in appreciation of the body of her work, than for this vehicle. I stood too.
I wish I had taken more time to absorb the surroundings. As is true in many older New York theatres, this one was ornate and small. It has had several incarnations.
But that I was there, walking with the adoring crowds (many of them in costume trying to get last minute tickets for the last show), in the cacophony that is London, was almost a surprise to me, a kind of personal cheerful fantasy.
And then we were off to a local Bar/Pub, where I sampled a dark beer that I'd call "interesting", and shared a congenial meal with Denise, an old friend, and Heather and Chris, new ones, kind to me in every way, as if we had known each other forever.
Another delightful day in my own kind of wonderland.
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