Leonard Bernstein's
Peter Pan

Off to Oz and Neverland!
Two new family productions stand out on German-speaking stages in January: Rostock Theatre presents the classic The Wizard of Oz, freshly adapted by Lucy Landymore in an amazing small format, and Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan can be experienced as a dance production for the first time at Görlitz Theatre.

By Frank Harders-Wuthenow

[ … ] On 21 January, the wee dance company, the dance department of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz, celebrates the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan. Dan Pelleg and Marko E. Weigert, artistic directors of the company, are realising the piece as an interdisciplinary dance theatre piece with dancers, singers, choir and orchestra, based exclusively on Bernstein's rousing music and his own song lyrics.

Peter Pan, a classic of children's literature, and Leonard Bernstein - one of the icons of music history as a composer, conductor, pianist and music mediator: Who better than the creator of West Side Story and Candide could have turned the extraordinary story about the boy who doesn't want to grow up into a musical theatre? Bernstein's Peter Pan premiered on Broadway in 1950. What was supposed to be a complete musical ended up being reduced to a play adaptation of Barrie's book with only a handful of musical numbers that the actors were capable of singing. Most of Bernstein's music disappeared into a drawer and was only rediscovered decades later by the American conductor Alexander Frey. His CD recording of all the songs and musical numbers in 2005 revealed an unbelievable musical treasure containing some of the best of Bernstein's music. While a number of songs have since taken on a life of their own and become hits - "Build my house", "Who am I", "Neverland", "Peter, Peter", "Dream with me" - the stage version has nevertheless remained a stepchild among Bernstein's musical theatre works, which is linked to the great challenges facing the cast.

Dan Pelleg and Marko E. Weigert have now made a virtue of necessity and have completely dispensed with dialogue texts in their dance theatre. The starting point of their concept is the idea of role play, which is derived from a central sentence in the piece. The idea of a play within a play was already present in the original Broadway version, in which Boris Karloff played both the father of the family, Mr Darling, and Captain Hook.

For the choreographers, the character of Peter Pan is no one-sided “saviour of fantasy” that adults long for, nor are they primarily concerned with not wanting to grow up (a problem which currently seems to be afflicting more and more people, with all the fatal consequences for the world), but rather the dichotomy between our developmental process of ‘not coming to a standstill’ and ‘adulthood’, in which, stuck in a corset of constraints and social expectations, no mental growth is possible.

Here, the choreographers uncover layers that are not necessarily present in Barrie's book, but in Bernstein's song lyrics and music.

With Peter Pan, musically directed by Ewa Strusinska, the wee dance company bids farewell to Görlitz after 13 extremely successful years with its troupe. We wish them luck and success on their new endeavours!