2024 Audience Reviews

Company: Clevername Theatre
Show: The Peter Pan Cometh
Venue: Theatre in the Round

A Positive, Spoiler-free* Review

I will preface this by saying I have seen both Peter Pan (Mary Martin's classic portrayal being a favorite) and Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (most notably with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago) on stage and screen in numerous iterations. Any schmuck can throw together a mashup of two things that have obvious or subtle overlap. The catalog of material using Peter Pan as a jump-off point to go dark is expansive. Referencing The Iceman Cometh's actual content or simply its title (I'm looking at you Mr. Clay) has become a common trope. Clevername Theatre is not any schmuck. The Peter Pan Cometh delicately weaves together both of these familiar stories and their characters into a piece that expertly crafts the source material into a unique piece that can stand alone with or without an expansive knowledge of each work's history. The superb cast is enchanting from the very first line until the very end. O'Neil's The Iceman Cometh is a near-five-hour, multiple-intermission event. I could have watched Alec Berchem's Smee, Isabelle Hopewell's Tinker, Nick Hill's Peter and Thomas Buan's Jas Hook for another four hours. You can visually recognize the characters and the dialogue and scenes are certainly familiar, but Clevername Theatre has created a dark, complex world all its own.   You don't need to see O'Neil's anarchistic shadow to connect to The Peter Pan Cometh. *Okay, one moderate spoiler. In every theatrical production of Peter Pan, after you're invested in the story, they bring up the house lights to clap for Tinker Bell. Typically, it's a cringy, uncomfortable turn that ruins any dramatic momentum; I've sat through this in numerous high school gyms and theaters. The "If you believe, clap your hands" scene in The Peter Pan Cometh is the most excruciating I've witnessed. Nevertheless, that gut-wrenching demand for mandatory participation created one of the most memorable moments I've ever had in a theater.