Peter Pan El Musical

We do lots of Lorca in English, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t see what Peter Pan looks like in Spanish. Unfortunately, Peter Pan: El Musical is merely one ’ell of a bad musical that should have stayed in Benidorm or Tenerife. This too long one-month season at the Garrick marks the end of a five-year tour, for which relief, I think I can confidently say on behalf of you all, “muchas gracias.”

There’s a joke buried in the pitiful patter of piratical Smee (Pedro Espadas, an actor who, judging by the suave manner of his curtain call, is accustomed to better than my rudeness), about English expats in that beautiful country.

One thing I do know they don’t get there is decent musical theatre. It’s none of my business, really, but it seems very sad that Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns, owners of the Garrick, should hire out their premises for what is basically amateur night on the Costa del Sol.

The scenery wobbles, and so do most of the mermaids in the blue lagoon, who wear fin feet and fun bras and prove, as they flop around the cardboard rockery, that fins really ain’t what they used to be. The cache of Lost Boys, or “ninos perdidos”, are refugees from some sort of rubbish Iberian production of Cats, clinging to their furry bits like crazy.

We are too spoilt by the recent reclamation in our theatre by Trevor Nunn and John Caird of J M Barrie’s masterpiece. But why have an el cheapo Spanish version, in April, in the West End? Captain Hook, played by Miguel Angel Gamero, “Spain’s leading musical theatre star”, the programme says - which is a bit like saying “England’s leading baseball player” – is not even good, or indeed bad, enough to get booed.

Peter himself is athletically played, almost to the point of exhaustion, by Miguel Antelo, but his style is that of a desperate, arms-akimbo anxiety to please that went out of fashion with the London Transport Players 20 years ago. The rest of the cast follow suit, gooning like the Grumbleweeds in a downmarket summer show in Great Yarmouth. All aboard, they cry, the “Ole, Rioja!”

Or was that the Jolly Roger? Still, one is always glad to reassert one’s belief in fairies, even by standing up and singing in Spanish. Unlike the old lady in Candide, however, I did not actually feel “suddenly Spanish.” If anything, I felt suddenly Danish; which is why I may have looked so pastry-faced at the end of a very irritating show. Tinkerbell, that tiresome little fairy, is represented early on by a horrid green laser light show that makes the Richmond annual pantomime look thrillingly avant-garde.

There are some limber Indians prancing around Tiger Lily and they do a Stomp-style tribal number with luminous sticks. Most of the songs are Eurovision pop pap with ghastly key changes and an awful sound system, which has a sort of invasive metallic layer over it, coming at you through two ugly big speakers on the stage. And no, I’m certainly not going to say who they are.

- Michael Coveney