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Peter Pan Flies Home to Kensington Gardens Tent

After more than 100 years, the boy who wouldn’t grow up will return home to Kensington Gardens this summer when Peter Pan will be performed there in a specially designed 1,100-seat tent in the Royal Park. The new version of JM Barrie’s children’s classic will run from 10 June to 30 August 2009 (previews from 26 May).

On the back of the success of the original play – which premiered at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre on 27 December 1904 – Barrie published the illustrated book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906. In it, he wrote: “Standing on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were doubtless the Kensington Gardens, and the moment he saw them he entirely forgot that he was now a little boy in a nightgown, and away he flew, right over the houses into the Gardens.”

The tent home of the new production, directed by former Almeida associate director and site-specific specialist Ben Harrison, will be situated in the meadow between West Carriage Drive and the Long Water, located in the north-east of Kensington Gardens near Lancaster Gate Tube station. The rainproof pavilion will also include a bar and restaurant, and there will be picnic facilities on site.

Peter Pan is adapted by Tanya Ronder, whose previous credits include adaptations of Vernon God Little at the Young Vic and Lorca’s Blood Wedding at the Almeida. It’s designed by William Dudley, who will create a new 3D virtual environment for the production, and produced by Charlie Burnell and Mat Churchill, by arrangement with the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity and Samuel French Limited.

- by Terri Paddock

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