Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up

Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up – A Fantasy in Five Acts is a version of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, by John Caird and Trevor Nunn. (Note Barrie's use of the contraction wouldn't; it's probably an unintentional distinction by Caird and Nunn, but it's handy for disambiguating this version from Barrie's drafts.) It is published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. which provides acting editions of scripts, and handles licensing of plays, for professional and amateur theatrical productions. This version was written in 1993, and first performed by a little troupe known as the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Caird wrote as an introduction to this version: "'A brief explanation of some of the decisions we took in revising the text may be useful to anyone considering their own production of this version. We were fascinated to discover that there was no one single document called PETER PAN. What we found was a tantalizing number of different versions, all of them containing some very agreeable surprises. We have made some significant alterations, the greatest of which is the introduction of a new character, the Storyteller, who is in fact the author himself. To a reader of the play, one of its most enjoyable ingredients is Barrie's unmistakable authorial tone. He tells the story of Peter Pan partly through dialogue and partly by means of his inimitable stage directions. In a whimsical, ambiguous and ironical manner he speaks here as clearly to adults as he does to children. Moreover, many of the play's complicated conceits are only comprehensible if Barrie's commentary can be heard in parallel with the voices of the characters. This device also allows us to prepare our audience with some essential background history of the Darling family in a brief prologue, and to extend the narrative at the end of the play to include Barrie's heartbreaking and heartwarming conclusion to Peter and Wendy's story.'" By including the Storyteller in the play, this version regains some of the depth that Barrie was able to include in the prose of the novel Peter and Wendy.