From the E-Mailbag…

My old pal Pat O'Neill wrote…

A local community theater I occasionally work with just finished a run of Peter Pan. Like the Rigby version, they dropped "Mysterious Lady" and Liza's ballet (Liza being the Darlings' maid), but kept the bit where she asks Peter to teach her to crow, leading to the reprise of "I Gotta Crow." (It looked like it's necessary to cover a scene change, actually — and I'd bet the ballet was, too.)

Their Peter was a young woman who could — had I not known the convention of a woman playing Peter — have completely convinced me she was male. It can be done.

Oh, I know it can be done. Cathy Rigby pretty much made me forget her gender for the duration of the play. I just wonder why it always has to be done. There are other theatrical versions of Peter Pan (other than the one with the score by Leigh, Charlap, Comden, Green and Styne) that cast males in the role.

The ballet with the animals may have covered a scene change in the version you saw but in the Mary Martin version, it took up the whole stage so nothing was changing. It was in there because, once upon a time, it was Standard Operating Procedure for Broadway musicals to hand one whole number over to the choreographer to show off. Most of the top choreographers demanded it even when, like Jerome Robbins in this case, the choreographer was also the director.

Broadway shows of the period usually had one even if, as in Peter Pan, it stopped the action and did not advance the story one bit. One of the best was the "Sadie Hawkins' Day Ballet" in Li'l Abner where the ballet not only advanced the story a lot but it closed the first act. I seem to recall that when My Fair Lady opened for previews, it had a ballet that was quickly cut.

I haven't heard if they've cut the ballet in the version of Peter Pan that airs tonight. They seem to want to make this show technically difficult and filled with spectacle so perhaps not. I also don't know what they're going to do about the scene where Peter asks the audience to clap to save Tinker Bell's life. There's no live audience there.

I'm still looking forward to the show but some of the publicity almost seems to be saying, "Hey, it's live! Tune in and see if anything goes wrong!" I assume that if there are any screw-ups, they won't be fixed for the West Coast feed of the show…but this is looking less and less like a musical and more like one of those "daredevil" TV specials where we tune in just to see if Evel Knievel is going to make it over the canyon or some Wallenda is going to walk the tightrope successfully.