'Finding Neverland' an Enduring Wonder

Near the end of the first act of “Finding Neverland,” playwright J.M. Barrie’s life begins to implode. His wife leaves him for a foppish millionaire, his producer and contracted cast are breathing down his neck to produce a new play, and the mother of the woman that he has fallen for bans her daughter from seeing him. Barrie (Jeremy Jordan) descends into a fantastical vision fueled by the taut and macabre number “Circus of Your Mind.” The stage darkens and fogs as Barrie hurtles through the doors of his producer, his wife’s boudoir, and his paramour’s house. Choreographer Mia Michaels has the chorus carry the doors in a hypnotic circular motion around Barrie, who occasionally escapes through one of the doors only to find himself surrounded again. The overall effect is staggering—rarely does a musical number so effectively captures despair and confusion.

“Circus of Your Mind” is one of several show-stopping, emotional ballads that buoys the piece. Some of the sweeter ensemble moments, from a trite bar scene to an obnoxiously flamboyant freak-out by Barrie’s anxious cast, take away from the overall effect of the show. The freshness of the darker musical numbers and dynamism of the cast salvage these occasional stumbles into simplicity and sweetness, practically ensuring that “Finding Neverland” will be a Broadway success.

The show, inspired by the darker and decidedly more adult 2004 film of the same name, explores Barrie’s conception of Peter Pan, which runs in parallel to his increasingly intense relationship with widow Sylvia Llwelyn Davis (Laura Michelle Kelly) and her four young boys (Alex Dreier, Hayden Signoretti, Sawyer Nunes, and Aidan Gemme). The imaginative games and adventures that Barrie embarks on with the family provide the initial inspiration for his iconic project, which forms as his marriage slips away and his professional career is in the balance. While Peter Pan is (obviously) lauded, Barrie’s world is suddenly too good to be true—the eventual shift towards the maudlin can be seen from a mile away, but that doesn’t make it pack any less of a punch.

The music that accompanies Barrie’s alternately tragic and triumphant trajectory is consistent and often inspired. While the aforementioned bar scene (“Play”) and Peter Pan rehearsal debacle (“The World Is Upside Down”) fizzle, their failure has more to do with their manic staging and clownish acting than a lack of musical grace. Gary Barlow, a former boy band star, and Eliot Kennedy, a songwriter most famous for working with the Spice Girls, pen the songs. Despite the composers’ teen-pop backgrounds, the songs sound more like Oasis and Blur—“What You Mean to Me,” Barrie and Sylvia’s heart wrenching Act II duet, evokes the tight harmonies of the Gallagher brothers on 1995’s “Cast No Shadow.” The first act’s finale (“Hook”), in which Barrie comes up with the Captain Hook villain in a fantasy sequence that presents the pirate as the writer’s id, is similarly strong and reminiscent of Brit Pop.

Much of the effectiveness of the music is attributable to the gorgeous vocals of Jordan and Kelly. Jordan, particularly, is in astonishing form. He floats effortlessly from a crystalline belt into a silky, pure-toned falsetto without any indication of strain or excessive vibrato. Since bursting onto the scene with his central roles in NBC’s “SMASH” and Broadway’s “Newsies,” the latter of which garnered him a Tony nomination, Jordan has become a force to be reckoned with. He matches his powerhouse singing with a spotless Scottish brogue and an affable and honest demeanor that makes him instantly sympathetic. While Kelly’s voice isn’t quite as smooth, she owns the stage and brims with kindness and honesty in “Sylvia’s Lullaby,” her solo about her love for Barrie.

All four of the actors who portray Sylvia’s children are surprisingly authentic: they are shockingly full-voiced and theatrically subtle. Aidan Gemme as Peter, the most precocious child and the most resistant to Barrie and his fantasy worlds, is especially poignant. His voice shakes with a total lack of pretension as he recalls his father’s death and tightens with defiance as he becomes suspicious of Barrie’s happy-go-lucky games. He is a natural talent who will likely receive extensive praise in coming years.

Director Diane Paulus’s ability to keep the frenetic and emotionally fluctuating show together is commendable. Many of the issues that she hasn’t addressed in “Finding Neverland” aren’t structural—the dramatic action unfolds at a satisfying clip. Instead, it’s the sexual fire of the central couple and simplicity of the show that are problematic. While death plays a central role, emotional ambiguity does not—Sylvia and sons take an instant liking to Barrie (and vice versa), and the duo never fights. If the Broadway team tones down some of the more flashy ensemble scenes and injects more realistic chemistry and hesitation into Barrie and Sylvia's relationship, Paulus will have sparked another hit.