Peter Pan Season

Peter Pan (100th Anniversary Edition), Michael Hague, Illustrator

BBC Radio 4 presents a mini-season of programmes to celebrate the 100th anniversary of J. M. Barrie's popular classic. There will be six programs. The one on Dec. 23 will tell the story of the play's opening night. The preview gives these quotes by the critics on that night's performance.

...The Daily Telegraph review was stunning in its praise:

" Peter Pan is a play of such originality, of such tenderness, and of such daring, that not even a shadow of doubt regarding its complete success was to be discerned in the final fall of the curtain.... It is so true, so natural, so touching, that it brought the audience to the writer's feet and held them captive there.

But others in the first night audience were less than complimentary - George Bernard Shaw complained that it was a play foisted on children by grown-ups and Anthony Hope, the inventor of Ruritania, sat unmoved throughout the performance, and at the end was heard to remark: "Oh, for an hour of Herod!"

Ouch!