In 1954 J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan (original subtitle: “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”) was finally adapted into a musical piece on Broadway titled ‘Peter Pan.’
The first person that had been hired for the production was the director Jerome Robbins, who had choreographed ballets and Broadway musicals but had never before directed. Robbins had actually previously worked on collating the various versions of the script that had been done through the years, trying, as he said, to “find a way of doing it freshly and less stickily, less cutely, more robustly.” It was West Coast producer Edwin Lester who got the rights in America to adapt the story into a play with music.
The Musical makes the choice to incorporate a different ending to the original play, one which Barrie wrote in 1911, some time after
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He had gotten the rights to adapt the story into a play with music specifically for Mary Martin as the title character. The tradition to usually cast a woman as the role of Peter Pan came about from the very first stage debut because of the prosaic reason that it was illegal for any child under the age of twelve or thirteen to be on a London stage after nine o’clock at night. But this casting convention also spoke to the play’s subtle but profound exploration of topics like gender, sexuality, identity, and even mortality, and is a part of its deep appeal to so many children. Sondra Lee, who was one of the first people that was called to be apart of the show and who earned the role of the Indian Maiden Tiger Lee, Wendy’s rival for Peter’s heart recalled; “In the musical, Mary Martin was just as much part of the growth of Peter as anybody.” and said that “I would venture to say that — well, the work was originally called Wendy’s Dream — I would say [the female Peter] is the spirit of Peter Pan. That it could very well be Wendy’s