Peter Pan Gets the Pixar Treatment
Friday 29th May, 10.28am
JM Barrie’s timeless story is going to be staged in Kensington Gardens, with rather space-age special effects.
Performed in a huge tent, visitors to the show will be immersed in a colourful world of images five times’ bigger than those at the puny IMAX cinema. With unmatched clarity and definition, the team behind the animations come from Hollywood movies like Toy Story and Spiderman.
What’s more, it seems that believing in fairies is no longer the issue. Tinker Bell’s going to be 15ft high and be buzzing round the big top like a huge space-wasp!
No, I joke: there are definitely no space wasps.
In fact, the production sticks pretty close to JM Barrie’s original play and is the first time the show will return to Kensington Gardens, one of the settings for the original, in over 100 years. A little more hi-tech than the last time it was performed in the capital, the new state-of-the-art version is directed by Ben Harrison and boasts 360-degree CGI. The new Pan is certainly going to be an experience.
One of the most celebrated aspects of the show is the breathtaking four-minute flight the children take over London. Flying through the stunning animations, the production shows the gang whizz around the great dome of St. Paul’s. The staggering sequence took 200 computers over two-and-a-half weeks to complete.
The show also boasts some rather familiar faces, Ciaran Kellgren from C4’s Shameless plays Peter Pan while Captain Hook is played by Jonathan Hyde, who featured in the 1997 film Titanic.
Opening tonight, Peter Pan will play at Kensington Gardens until 30 August. If you want to enjoy the magical (well, I say magical, I’ve just spent the last 300 words describing how a team of technical boffins took nearly two years to put it together) show I’d advise you book early. This is one London experience you’ll not want miss out on: You’ll Neverland forgive yourself!
