Peter Pan: a futuristic trip to the past

Peter Pan: The Never Ending Story is an apt name for an arena spectacle that strives to keep a century-old tale alive.

Between March 5 and 13, the acrobatic musical will hit the stage in Dubai. Where audiences once had to rely on their fantastical imaginations to conjure up Neverland, they can now lose themselves in a completely digitalised stage projection of the island and its occupants from the comfort of their World Trade Centre seats.

“When there is no projection, the whole stage is grey. But when the projection is on, that’s the whole show,” lead actor Sandor Sturbl said last Tuesday. A sense of wonder permeated his words, despite it being two years since he first took on the role.

Sitting with tabloid! in a large gymnasium-style room at Al Noor Training Centre for Children with Special Needs, Sturbl and his Wendy co-star, real life fiance Lilly-Jane Young — who he proposed to mid-show in Glasgow just over a month ago — were in costume after meeting and greeting their young fans.

His character, Peter Pan, first appeared in J.M. Barrie’s novel, Little White Bird, in 1902. Since then, the story of Peter Pan’s adventures and his obsession with childhood has been told and re-told through plays, books and movies — but it has never come to life quite like this.

To start with, tired stage props are replaced with 18 projectors that reflect scenery and enchanting locations onto the stage for two hours.

“We actually can create different worlds,” Sturbl said.

In one particular scene, Young chimed in, the cast have to move from the Pirates’ Bay to the Lost Boys’ Forest, making for a visually stunning transition.

“You’re actually watching mushrooms growing in front of you. The whole thing feels very alive. It’s laden with technology, but it doesn’t feel fake. It feels very real and,” Sturbl says, “it feels like you’re really in Neverland.”

But the danger is that if the projection stops, the whole show comes to a halt. With a bright laugh, Young admitted that it had happened before — but only in the early days of production.

“It was quite interesting — you’re standing in the middle of Neverland, and it disappears! It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose,” she laughed. “But the technology is state of the art, so there’s no chance of anything like that happening in Dubai.”

The 50 cast members — singers, dancers, acrobats, magicians and stunt people — come from all over the world, bringing more than 10 nationalities to the stage.

“We have most dancers coming from Italy and France. We have Moroccan acrobats. Lilly-Jane comes from Scotland and I’m from Holland,” Sturbl shared. “You really notice different cultures from everybody.”

The performers — who collectively have 300 costumes to wear — play a variety of roles, including lead characters Peter, Wendy, Tinker Bell (Lebanese singer Myriam Fares will play Tinker Bell on opening night), Captain Hook, the Darlings, the Lost Boys, the Indians and Pirates and the general “ensemble”.

But the show-stealing moment goes to Peter himself, who flies without wires, blown upwards by a wind turbine at a noisy 250km per hour in order to keep him elevated. The stunt is akin to indoor skydiving and creating the illusion of flight.

“This will be the world’s first,” Sturbl said. “They managed to actually build an engine into the stage. It’s really spectacular.”

It’s one of many things that makes Sturbl’s job a challenging one. He said that the “all-around stamina” needed to play the part is what keeps him on his toes.

“It’s not only the turbine, but you also have to fly around the stage with the harnesses,” he said. “You have to run, and then you have to come up here and there, and then there are elevators, and there are traps where you have to disappear and, 10 seconds later, you have to come up on the other side of the stage. You have to sing a song, and then you have to save Wendy and you have to fight Captain Hook. So for me, the toughest part of the show is the show!”

Young chuckled, but she seemed delighted by her fiance’s explanation. She said that making the whole ordeal seem effortless so audiences would suspend their disbelief could be a struggle with a show this ambitious. But the result was worth it, in Young’s opinion, if only for their ability to reinvent a classic and insert the “best version” of themselves into the characters.

“You’ve got a little bit of Disney in there, but then you’ve got a little bit of Tim Burton in there, as well, like Sandor’s costume itself — he’s a little bit unhuman,” she said. “It really is its own version of Peter Pan.”

The show is pieced together in such a way that both children and adults can get a kick out of it. For the young ones, a 10 foot crocodile might be the highlight, but for the adults, the integration of 16 classic songs, which originate from the likes of Rod Stewart, Westlife and Robbie Williams, might be more of a selling point.

“Music-wise, the production team chose to use already existing covers and Matt Dunkley [the musical director] composed new arrangements under those songs,” Sturbl said. “They’re actually all classics, so adults will all recognise them and that will be interesting.”

A 150-piece orchestra recorded the songs over the span of “one or two days”, according to Young; they picked up their instruments at the famous AIR studios in London and played the music effortlessly after seeing the sheets for the very first time. During the live shows, however, everything but the vocals is playback.

“Travelling with a 150 piece orchestra would be near-enough impossible, I think we’d be bankrupt in a night,” Young said. “But with the recording sessions that we had for the band, it’s like they’re there every night.”

Aside from the music, the digital effects and the multi-talented cast, the simple story behind Peter Pan and his “never want to grow up” mind set has the power to bring together multiple generations, something that Young said is indispensable to the appeal of the arena tour.

“I speak to my grandfather, and this is his favourite story. He’s well into his 70s, and he still says, ‘I remember, Jane, I remember what it’s like to be a child, and you never lose that, no matter how old you get’,” she said.

“What adults take away from it, is they get to go back 20, 30, 40 years, just for one night, and remember just what it was like to be carefree and have an adventure. That’s why, I think, Peter Pan absolutely works for everyone.”

Tickets, priced Dh195-Dh1,295, are available on platinumlist.ae. Shows occur once, at 7pm, on weekdays, and twice, at 3pm and 7pm, on weekends.