About Peter Pan

The play by Sir James Barrie - continued

 

In 1900 the Barries bought a cottage as a permanent holiday home in Surrey. The following year the Davies family went to stay at a nearby farmhouse for six weeks. The Barries’ cottage stood in the middle of thick pine-woods on the shore of a small lake and Barrie and the older boys spent their days exploring the area and populating it with exotic characters. The stories from Kensington Gardens were resumed but now they also included Pirates and Indians. The woods and the lake became the setting for colourful adventures involving shipwrecks, hut-building and daring rescues, all of which could now be enacted instead of merely related. Barrie kept a photographic record of this summer holiday in 1901 and started making his first notes for what was to become one of the most famous children’s plays ever – Peter Pan.

The first performance of Peter Pan was on 27 December 1904 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. It ran for 150 performances ending on 1 April 1905 with a simultaneous announcement that it would be presented again the following Christmas, when it also opened in New York. It was then revived every year in London until the fifties, with the exception of 1939 and 1940, the years of the London Blitz.

The Musical by Piers Chater Robinson - History

The London and New York Theatre Publishers, Samuel French Ltd, first published Piers Chater Robinson’s Musical of Peter Pan in the UK in 1985. It is now in its third edition and fourth reprint and has sold thousands of copies in most English speaking countries. In the last fourteen years, the show has enjoyed many box-office record-breaking seasons in United Kingdom theatres [including London’s West End] and it has also been performed in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and across Europe.

In addition to professional presentations, the work is a favourite with schools and amateur societies and a large number of productions are performed annually by these forces world-wide.

Following the West End London production in 94/95, starring Ron Moody and Nicola Stapleton, Piers Chater Robinson directed the UK national tour and spring season in Dublin, Ireland. He also produced the CD of the show album for EMI records.

In 1998, he directed a new Danish translation of the show in Aarhus, Denmark that went on to break the theatre’s one hundred year box-office record.

That same year the show was also translated into Spanish and, with a new album recorded and released in Spain, it opened in Madrid’s largest theatre and was awarded Spain’s “Max” award for best family musical. Since that time the production enjoyed a two-year tour throughout Spain, which finished in 2001.

October of that same year saw the Dutch premiere, again directed by Piers, which starred The Netherlands’ leading artistes Vera Mann and Peter Faber. This production toured the Benelux until mid 2002. Prior to rehearsals, Piers Chater Robinson also co-produced the recording of the new Dutch CD of the show, which is now released on the Universal and Decca Record label.

2003 saw the Musical’s triumphant return to Denmark for the Christmas season, directed again by Piers, where it broke box office records for the second time.

In negotiation are future productions throughout Europe including Germany, the UK and the Latin American Territories.

Back to Peter Pan and also the connection with Great Ormond Street Hospital