Peter Pan

An Audible Original Drama

By: J. M. Barrie

Narrated by: Adeel Akhtar, Rupert Everett, Gerran Howell, Eleanor Worthington-Cox

Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's Summary

This Audible Original Drama of Peter Pan takes listeners on a magical adventure with Peter, Wendy, Michael and John as they arrive in Neverland and take on Captain Hook with the help of Tiger Lilly and Tinker Bell.

The story begins at home in London during The Blitz, and Mary Darling is planning to evacuate her children to the countryside. However, her plans take an unexpected turn when a familiar face from her childhood returns...the one and only Peter Pan, the mysterious boy from Kensington Gardens. Intrigued by their mother’s friend, Wendy, Michael and John seek Peter Pan out, resulting in them being whisked off to Neverland and setting up home with Peter, Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys. 

As Peter and his gang come up against the wickedly evil Captain Hook, their friendships and relationships are put to the test - can Wendy be honest with Peter about how she really feels, and will Michael and John return home without their sister?

Rupert Everett (The Happy Prince, My Best Friend’s Wedding) stars as Captain Hook alongside Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions, Killing Eve) as Smee, Gerran Howell (Catch-22, Emerald City) as Peter Pan and Eleanor Worthington Cox (Maleficent, Britannia) as Wendy alongside a full cast.

To mark the launch of this drama, Audible will be donating to Great Ormond Street Hospital, to whom J.M. Barrie unexpectedly and generously gifted his copyright of Peter Pan.

Performed by: Adeel Akhtar, Mariska Ariya, Catherine Bailey, Rupert Everett, Neil Frost, William Harper, Gerran Howell, Simon Kane, Mack Keith Roach, Rocco Padden, Richard Reed, Maya Shepelev, Louis Suc, Harry Tuffin and Eleanor Worthington-Cox.

Public Domain (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Enjoyed narration but puzzled by "updated" story

I read the original Peter Pan book many years ago and was really confused by this Audible original, especially the talk of WWII when the book was written in 1911. The performances are amazing - it is easy to detect which character is speaking in every case. So well done. Still, I would have appreciated some warning about this not really being the work of JM Barrie, but as others have mentioned, it is more "based on" the work of JM Barrie.

Amazing!

I don't have high expectations of the free monthly audible offerings, so this was an unexpected gem! The full cast production and sound effects make it sound like an old radio show or you're actually listening to a production of the stage play. This version is a bit different, but I found that I quite liked what was changed. Peter Pan was originally published in the early 1900s (between 1900 and 1910, depending on if you mean the play or the book) and it was set in the Victorian period, which was at a small remove from the time period in which children were actually watching/reading Peter Pan when it first came out. This variation of Peter Pan keeps the remove but lessens it by moving the exposition with the Darlings from the Victorian period to World War II. This changes some things - Mr. Darling is away fighting so he's an absent character and the Darling children are afraid of being sent away to the countryside which is what prompts them to run away to Neverland, among other things - but nothing substantial. I also liked that the native tribe has been eliminated, but that Tiger Lily as a character is kept. Even better, Tiger Lily is the leader of a group of lost girls in Neverland, a rival to Peter's lost boys and another enemy of the pirates. These were both minor changes that gave the story an updated feel without radically changing anything and both these changes removed problematic elements of the original Peter Pan play/book (such as racism). Overall, this was AWESOME. (If all the audible originals had this kind of quality I wouldn't have to tell people that they're almost never worth it.) In any case, I highly recommend this variation of Peter Pan, especially if you have the opportunity to get it for free this month.

Not the original work

This is a reasonably enjoyable performance, but it's sold as "Peter Pan" by J.M. Barrie when it is really a story based on "Peter Pan" by J.M. Barrie.

Disappointing

The acting and production values were great. The story was an amalgamation of various modern interpretations that didn't mesh well, set during the London Blitz but everyone spoke in modern slang. The opening sequence with the mother's memories of her experiences with Pan went on far too long, I started wondering if it was the same book. Hook and Shmee played to all of the worst Gay Villain stereotypes (at least they weren't blatant paedophiles). The children were portrayed as horribly obnoxious; the whole thing lost all of the story's innate charm. I'd love to hear a re-write of this with the same actors and production value, but in a far more traditional style.

Ruined the classic

I hated the poor anachronistic changes. They ruined one of my favorite stories. If they were trying for their own"Hook", they failed miserably.

Boring...

I tried to listen to this and I just could not for the life of me listen to this at all. It was all over the place and personally I’m glad it was free cause I would have been even more upset if I had paid for this.

Perversion of a Delightful Classic

Who asked for a retelling of a children’s tale that inserts a load of ridiculous political themes and adult content? I couldn’t be more disgusted.

Not the original Victorian version.

Not what I expected. This should have been described as “based on J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan”.

Sound quality

Sound is very echoey and tin like. Not great quality. Story great but quality not

pirates steal the show

I honestly struggled to stay interested at times, but every time I started to fade Hook and his pirates pulled me right back in.

unfortunate feminist adaptation

My first thought was that it wasn't what I expected, moving the setting to WW2 didn't upset me it was just different [until I suspected it was just to make Mary a single mother], but then I was struck by what I'll call "the aggresive feminist agenda" [and just as a note here, I'm not male] and I just thought "Why?", why do modern producers/directors feel that they have to politicise everything? It's based on the Peter Pan characters, but I wouldn't call it by Barrie. The voice acting was excellent, but this is a children's story, aimed at primary school age children and frankly I wouldn't let a child of mine listen to it because it actively promulgates a political agenda. There's a section where Wendy, I think, literally complains about being oppressed by males, which is particularly jarring, as is Mary's behaviour to Nana. There was a subliminal impression that she had to lose her children in order to learn to behave better.

Peter Pan this is NOT

Whoever decided to rewrite Peter Pan must have imagined they were improving it. They have not. Why move the story to the 1940s? Why excise the Indians and replace them with ‘Lost Girls’, whose existence totally goes against the (included) premise that girls are too sensible to fall out of their prams? And why on earth change the original vocabulary (Hook calling people ‘numpties’ and exclaiming ‘not on your nelly’)?? Everett is superb and the performances are fine - just a tragedy some misguided individual decided to mess with the actual original text in this ridiculous way...

Disappointing

For me the dramatization just didn’t work, would have preferred the book to have been read as written. Nice gesture to make it a free Christmas download Audible but I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.

A poor adaptation of a classic

Made unnecessary changes to the original version. Would recommend you read the book and skip this version

Couldn't finish it

If you are a child listening to Peter Pan for the first time or you aren't bothered by changes made to classic stories then you will probably enjoy this adaptation. Unfortunately I am neither and so the whole WWII thing was jarring and a bit confusing. Having not read any description of the adaptation I first thought it was a sequel and not the original Peter Pan. Once I got my head around that, there seemed a lot of changes with "lost girls" even though earlier Peter had said there weren't any lost girls, so the story seemed a bit of a mess. The Pirates finished it for me. I couldn't handle Hook's fawning over Smee, it was all a bit over the top and so as I wasn't enjoying it I decided to stop and find something else to listen to. A missed opportunity.

Clumsy attempt to update a classic

The performance should have been better given the cast but a lot of wooden acting and very little heart.

This is not Peter Pan.

Peter Pan is a towering classic. It cannot be improved. If someone attempted to improve it, filtering it through 2019 feminism & changing parts of it for absolutely no good reason would not be the way to go. That route only leads to one thing: ruining a good opportunity for a new dramatization of this much loved masterpiece. Please remove Barrie's name from this and indeed the title 'Peter Pan'. No child should have to listen to Peter Pan for the first time thinking this bad adaptation is actually Peter Pan.

A little bit delirious.

This story is a bit strange. The setting is changed in more than one way as mentioned in other reviews. (If Tiger Lily's tribe was going to be changed it could have been in a more sensitive way instead of a way that promotes erasure. There was not really a reason to remove Mr. Darling and have him involved in WWII etc. and also there's this weird way that it implies Mrs. Darling is neglecting Nana...Not good.) First I thought maybe it was closer to the originals in that maybe it used more of JM Barrie's original concepts...but moving it to WWII certainly isn't that. Plus, I avoid WWII stories for a reason. In any case it wasn't too heavy handed, just unnecessary. I am intrigued by yet horrified by the original story which is a whole other thing, the more you dig into it the less tame it seems and in terms of tone this tone does match the original better--except the updated slang. This just seemed like a bit of a confused mess, honestly, but the actual voice acting was top notch. So I just didn't enjoy it much but the performance deserves 5 stars.

Brilliant adaptation but...

Very enjoyable and great fun for the whole family, but the sound effects were often too loud and overpowered the vocals. Sometimes when the vocals dipped in volume to provide depth to the sound, it was too quiet. Most of the voice actors were very well done but some were quite flat in emotion. I would recommend this as a bedtime treat with the whole family, there is some mild swearing like 'up yours' but fitting with the time and theme.

Immense Fun.

Magical and fun. My very favourite part was Rupert Everett as a camp Captain Hook.