Review - Finding Neverland

What a whirlwind time of year it is - I think there are dozens of shows opening throughout April, trying to get in before the Tony nomination deadline.  I'd love to see all of them (well, almost all of them), but budgetary constraints constantly rear their ugly heads.  Fortunately, I have generous friends who offer tickets to me when they can't use them.  Last Saturday, a generous friend couldn't use his ticket to Finding Neverland, so I was the happy recipient of his ticket.

I was a fan of the 2004 film of Finding Neverland - I'm a real sucker for backstage stories and especially for Peter Pan.  I cry like a baby when the Darling kids fly.  And I cried like a baby at the end of the Finding Neverland film.  I will admit I also got teary-eyed at the musical last Saturday, but only because of my personal reaction to the story, not because the show itself moved me.  I was actually rather flummoxed by the show...

(If you haven't seen the film or the musical, spoilers will abound.)  I hope I don't get yelled at or shot or blackballed by the very-famous-producer of Finding Neverland.  I feel badly that I didn't like it as much as he apparently wants me to.  But I don't think this show gives me a reason why it's a musical.  The music didn't elevate the material in any way, nor did it provide any new insights into the story.  Although there were some lovely effects, mostly the show just sort of laid there.

To sort of 'Pavlov's dog' the audience into applauding and getting into the spirit, Finding Neverland opens with light flashing around the plush stage curtain - it's Tinker Bell, getting us ready for the show to begin.  I thought this was cute, but it went on for way too long, as did the Peter Pan prologue.  Then J.M. Barrie (played by Matthew Morrison) came out and set up the show as a flashback.  We flash back to the unsuccessful opening night of Barrie's play before Peter Pan, and the empty life that fuels his writer's block.  The rest of the musical sticks relatively closely to the plot of the movie, except for one rather major plot point.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

All of the performers were persuasive and in good voice (I wasn't a fan of the overly amplified sound design, though, it sounded like they were performing on the moon and we were listening to the live feed).  The children were quite good, but I had a bit of a problem with the overly-big performances given by the ensemble.  They each had some very distracting and very silly stage business that was just mugging, not theatrical.  The choreography didn't appeal to me, but it was at least well-done throughout.  The sets were opulent and the costumes were mainly very lovely.  The big problem - the HUGE problem - with the show is the score.  And if you don't have a score, why have a musical?  The songs all had an interchangeable sameness to them, with generic, trite lyrics (side note: yesterday, I went with a lovely gal pal to see The Sound of Music on the big screen.  I cried during the movie, not just because I love it, but because the lyrics were so wonderful, and they weren't even Hammerstein's best.  But after hearing the Finding Neverland lyrics, the quality of R&H stood out even more).  You could probably have moved the order of the songs and it wouldn't have made much difference.  Some of the lyrics were so nonsensical that I truly couldn't understand what the song was supposed to be about.  Or, at times, even what the actual words were.  These were good performers, good actors and good singers, who couldn't put over these songs.  I really feel the fault lay in the songs.  The ballads all sounded like 80s boy band songs and the group numbers sounded like watered-down music hall numbers.  There was nothing distinctive or interesting in most of the music.

photo credit: Carol Rosegg

The plot point that deviated from the film is that J.M. Barrie and the widow he meets in the park (Sylvia) now have a romance.  A doomed romance, of course, because her fate hasn't changed.  But it was disconcerting for Barrie to go from a proper Edwardian writer to a shirt-ripping hunk in the last number of the first act and then turn into the romantic hero in the second act.  I thought the story was supposed to be about how Peter Pan happened, not a Harlequin romance.  The love story should be between Barrie and the whole family who inspired him, not just the woman.  I didn't care for the romantic overtones added, though it seemed as if the rest of the audience did.  There was lots of squealing in the audience when Morrison ripped open his shirt. 

There was actually a lot of squealing and applauding and shouting throughout the show.  I wonder at this phenomenon - I'm glad people are determined to enjoy themselves, but all of the squealing and screaming before the show even starts seems so false.  I don't know.  Maybe it gets other people in the mood.

I'm sorry I didn't enjoy the production more - I had a wonderful seat and I was all ready to be transported - but it mainly just made me want to go home and watch the movie.  I enjoy the story and would've been perfectly happy to see this cast perform the show without songs - the moments that were moving to me, like the flying efffects or Tinker Bell or the spectacular death scene for Sylvia, none of them had anything to do with the music, just with the magic of theater.  And the music is what should make the show soar.  At least, that's what I think should happen in a musical.  I guess there are those who disagree.  The show is doing great business, though, so what do I know?