torsdag den 4. april 2013

When Peter met Alice

Efter nu at have klokket i det noget så eftertrykkeligt i Kærlighedens Labyrint, fandt Jeg det helt på sin Plads at påbegynde en æventyrlig Fortælling om det banebrydende Elskovsmøde mellem den barnligt nysgerrige - men tvangsfikserede - Alice fra Wonderland og den realitetsfornægtende og flyvske - Barnedødens Sendebud - Peter Pan fra Neverland.

Disse 2 fantasifulde Figurer ville i min Forestilling sammen kunne have brudt den Forstillelse af Livet, som grumme Hændelser i Fortid, Nutid og Fremtid risikerer at fremprovokere, og i deres Fællesskab have høstet ind i Overflod af den Sanselighed, som de hver især tidligere havde bestræbt sig så flittigt på at fornægte.

Og så ser Jeg mig sandelig pludseligt overhalet indenom....  

Peter and Alice

review by Susannah Clapp, the Observer,

Noël Coward; Royal Court, London

Curious girl meets lost boy: Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw in Peter and Alice

(Uddrag)....This is the strange, almost eerie thing. To see two terrific actors at polar ends of their careers, each shedding and gaining years, in a play about the fantasy of eternal youth. It is this that will draw audiences to John Logan's play about the meeting between the real-life models for Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. The encounter actually took place, in 1932, when Alice Liddell Hargreaves was 80 and Peter Llewellyn Davies 35; Logan has imagined the details.

Judi Dench begins tight as an oyster, encrusted with age and depression and disappointment. She opens and lightens and unstiffens as she remembers the dance of girlhood, freezes as she recalls the tragedies that the war brought her as a married woman. Ben Whishaw, a long bent reed, becomes steadily more oppressed as he remembers the deaths that have happened all around him. In the beginning he looks crushed, his trousers puddling around his ankles; at the end he is desiccated. This is not a man who could ever have had wings.

If only we were less often instructed, more often simply shown. The liveliest scene in Peter and Alice comes when the fictional creatures turn on their real-life counterparts. Olly Alexander's Peter Pan, a leaf-covered wag, accuses Davies of being a drunk and an adulterer. Ruby Bentall's Alice, a po-faced Tenniel drawing come to sharp-tongued life, sneers at Liddell for over-indulging in laudanum and lovers. In a stroke you feel not only the losses of growing old but also the vibrant chilliness of these two child heroes: peevish Alice and heartless Peter.
Hvor er det dog bare lidt mistrøstigt; dog slet ikke tankehæmmende, at Tidens og Mulighedernes Fortabelse mellem 2 Virkelighedens Modeller på Æventyrlige Roller - med denne Opsætning på Noël Coward - får mig til at synes, at Min egen fantastiske Forestilling ville kunne have været en større Publikums Succes.