"For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday" at Berkeley Rep

I was really looking forward to this season-closer at Berkeley Rep. I'm a big fan of Sarah Ruhl, and have really enjoyed some of her works produced at Berkeley Rep (Eurydice, Dear Elizabeth) and elsewhere (Eurydice, Stage Kiss, The Oldest Boy). Ruhl has a great gift for dialogue, and produces characters I really care about.

And then there was "For Peter Pan...". There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but there's nothing very profound, either. It's pretty much "you grow up, you get old, you die." I kept waiting for some greater insight. Family relationships are, or can be, good. Religion and politics are controversial, but you stick with your family anyway. Some choices let you postpone part of the growing up thing.

Nicely written, with a few very clever moments. Nicely acted, but with nothing outstanding. It feels fairly "real," or at least, realistic, and maybe that's the problem. Real life isn't dramatic. Normal people are pretty boring. I kept waiting for the bit that would justify all this, but it never came.

Odd Choices

I was a little surprised with this play for a couple of reasons. For one, it starts with the family-gathered-for-dying-parent scene. It's not my favorite trope to start with, and I've seen it recently, at this theater, and done better ("Aubergine," which predates me blogging...sorry!). And also in Shotgun's reading of "You Got Older." So I'm struggling a little with Berkeley Rep's choice to put such a similar play on the stage again so soon.

The set design was clever, with reusable pieces that can morph from hospital to home to Neverland. I kind of liked the prologue, where Ann (Kathleen Chalfant) comes out through the curtain to talk with the audience. Unfortunately, during a later scene change, the crew kept bumping the curtain, which was very distracting, and then later scene changes happen without the curtain dropping, so crew are moving sets and pieces while I'm supposed to be watching something else. I kept looking for some meaning in the choices director Les Waters made here, but there didn't seem to be any. Was it meant to be related to Ann playing Peter Pan as a child? I didn't get it.

Family Matters

Individually, I thought all the five siblings in the play were pretty good characters, well acted. But there wasn't a whole lot of bond displayed between them. There was shared experience, which was good. There were a few odd questions that represented attempts to elicit information that aging family members would clearly already know about each other.

And then the deceased father wanders through the room while they're having his wake. It's cleverly staged and choreographed so that he can sit at a seat that was recently vacated, etc. And obviously it serves the purpose of showing that in some way he's still there. But that never really goes anywhere. We just have a symbolic presence, a couple of laughs, and then get upstaged by the dog. To what end? There doesn't seem to be a larger message.

Bottom Line

The play was OK, but I expected much more from playwright, director, and cast. It seemed like no one's heart was really in it, and the reaction from the audience was warm, but not particularly enthusiastic. I don't think this will be particularly memorable.