I do imagine in f – – kups! I do! I do!
And that’s what “Peter Pan Goes Unsuitable,” the happily hyperactive comedy that opened Wednesday night on Broadway, provides: missteps, mayhem, incapacitations, faulty sets and, in a roundabout way, “Fawlty Towers.”
The very funny British play’s premise is the season’s simplest. The amateur Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society tries to placed on “Peter and Wendy” and fails epically.
2 hours and five minutes, with one intermission. On the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. forty seventh St.
However the execution of the disasters is sort of balletic … well, if in “Swan Lake” the sets collapsed and unhinged children booed the dancers.
Chris (Henry Shields), the play-within-a-play’s director and its Captain Hook, is the spitting image of John Cleese because the famous Britcom “Fawlty Towers”’ Basil, the beleaguered hotel owner. And like Basil, he exaggeratedly tries to maintain every thing together and bungles it each time.
He has to contend with shouting Dennis (Jonathan Sayer), who has his lines fed to him through headphones as he plays Michael Darling but keeps reciting radio commercials as an alternative. And there’s Robert (Henry Lewis), who takes on the a part of Nana the dog and gets stuck within the doggy door.
Good thing Neil Patrick Harris because the narrator is on-hand with a chainsaw to assist cut him out. If only he could make his entrances and exits properly.
Poor Robert also has PTSD from a fatal production of “Oliver!”, and Sandra (Charlie Russell) acts like she’s a hippie dancing in a field as Wendy. The short change Annie (Nancy Zamit) makes from Mrs. Darling to the maid is an actor’s risqué nightmare.
There are hookups, betrayals, power outages, inappropriate sound cues and near-death experiences. And a mid-show alternative for Peter Pan is required. The performance goes so off-the-rails that on this Neverland the youngsters cheer for the should-be menacing crocodile (a beaming Matthew Cavendish).
The audience is pummeled with slapstick in director Adam Meggido’s production, and the antics never let up. Not that anybody involves a “Goes Unsuitable” show seeking serenity and introspection. Mischief Theatre’s similarly ill-fated “Play That Goes Unsuitable” was successful on Broadway in 2019 featuring a lot of these strong comedic actors.
At two hours and five minutes over two acts, the effect of the wackiness wears off a tad toward the top — though the ultimate chase scene is brilliantly choreographed on Simon Scullion’s set of 1,000,000 secrets.
And a few adults within the audience (not this one) might turn up their noses at Shields’ pantomime-like insistence that children boo Captain Hook. They usually boo so much. Just a few theatergoers looked aghast, like some drunks had just thrown their bras at King Lear. To them I’ll give the other advice that Peter Pan would: Grow up! Shields’ self-debasement is delightful.
That’s really all this lovable forged wants anyway — for us to get rowdy for them to be ridiculed.