1951 Boris Karloff Captain Hook Peter Pan

''Peter Pan'' is a 1950 musical adaptation of

J. M. Barrie Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, (; 9 May 1860 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several succe ...

's 1904 play '' Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up'' with music and lyrics by

Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; born Louis Bernstein; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was th ...

; it opened on Broadway on April 24, 1950. This version starred

Jean Arthur Jean Arthur (born Gladys Georgianna Greene; October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American film and theater actress whose career began in silent films in the early 1920s and lasted until the early 1950s. Arthur had feature roles in three F ...

Peter Pan Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical ...

Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), known professionally as Boris Karloff () and occasionally billed as Karloff the Uncanny, was a British actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film ''Frankenstei ...

in the dual roles of George Darling and

Captain Hook Captain James Hook is the main antagonist of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play ''Peter and Wendy, Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up'' and its various adaptations, in which he is Peter Pan's archenemy. The character is a pirate captain of the br ...

, and Marcia Henderson as

Wendy Wendy is a given name generally given to girls in English-speaking countries. In Britain during the English Civil War in the mid-1600s, a male Captain Wendy Oxford was identified by the Leveller John Lilburne as a spy reporting on his activit ...

. The show was orchestrated by Trude Rittmann and Hershy Kay and conducted by Benjamin Steinberg. The show ran for 321 performances, closing on January 27, 1951. The production was initially intended as a full-blown musical, with Bernstein composing a complete score for it, but was staged with only five songs – "Who Am I?", "Pirate's Song", "Plank Round", "Build My House", and "Peter Peter" – to accommodate the limited vocal ranges of the principals. In 1998, conductor Alexander Frey began research into whether there may have existed more material that Bernstein had composed for Peter Pan. Over the next seven years, as his schedule allowed, he discovered and restored almost an hour of previously unheard music, much of the material found (and not yet orchestrated) in the archives of the composer's manuscripts. The restored songs included "Captain Hook Soliloquy" and "Dream With Me", as well as other sung material, dance music and orchestral interludes. The world premiere recording of Bernstein's complete score was released on CD in 2005, conducted by Alexander Frey, and featuring Broadway star

Linda Eder Linda Eder (; born February 3, 1961) is an American singer and actress. She originated the role of Lucy Harris in the Broadway musical '' Jekyll & Hyde'', for which she was nominated for the Drama Desk Award. Biography Eder was born in Tucso ...

in the role of

Wendy Darling Wendy Moira Angela Darling is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of the 1904 play and 1911 novel ''Peter and Wendy'' by J. M. Barrie, as well as in most adaptations in other media. Her exact age is not specified in the origina ...

, and acclaimed baritone Daniel Narducci as

, on the Koch International Classics label. In December 2006, it was produced for the stage by The King's Head Theatre in Islington, London, with Katherine Kastin as Peter Pan, Peter Land as Captain Hook, and Rafaella Hutchinson as Tinker Bell, directed by Stephanie Sinclaire and featuring new musical arrangements by Mike Dixon. This production used only parts of the Bernstein score and none of the original orchestrations. The music was performed by an instrumental trio. In September 2008 the world premiere performance of the full Bernstein score was performed in concert with Alexander Frey conducting the Gulbenkian Orchestra, with dialogue adapted from the original

play by Nina Bernstein Simmons. Three performances were given in

Cascais Cascais () is a town and municipality in the Lisbon District of Portugal, located on the Portuguese Riviera, Estoril Coast. The municipality has a total of 214,158 inhabitants in an area of 97.40 km2. Cascais is an important tourism in Port ...

, Portugal, for a combined audience of over 10,000 people, and featured Geraldine James (narrator), John Sackville-West (Peter Pan), Charlotte Ellett and Rachel Nicholls (Wendy) and Nicholas Lester (Captain Hook). The first stage production of the full Bernstein score was given by Santa Barbara Theater (California) in December 2008, directed by Albert Ihde with a full orchestra again conducted by Alexander Frey. Another production was held at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in June 2018, directed by Christopher Alden.

Musical numbers

Sources

References

*Dietz, Dan. ''The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals'' (2014), Bowman & Littlefield, , p. 17

External links

* {{authority control 1950 musicals Broadway musicals Musicals based on plays Musicals by Leonard Bernstein Musicals based on Peter Pan