The play "Peter Pan" tells a great story and has interesting characters. A great amount of fun can be had with a crocodile roaming about and pirates having sword fights etc. The only problem is that this play is considered to be geared towards children and it long (about 3 hours). Children enjoy the high action parts but it is a long haul to see the whole, uncut play.

Apparently, the magic flying fairy dust was added only after the London Ambulance Service complained about dealing with copycat injuries.

*jumps off bed defiantly*

*dials 999*

Mary Rose- read ~2013. A fun ghost story.

What Every Women Knows- finished 12/21/14. A comedy of a woman (behind a clueless man)

I only read Peter Pan and the extra scene that was performed for its final performance. Barrie apparently continually changed his plays, so it's hard to have an authoritative edition. There's also a novelization of the play, but I don't know. The play is pretty perfect on its own. Adults being children, children pretending to be adults - but also never wanting to grown up. It's a mixed-up world but so incredibly beautiful. I highly recommend this particular edition, as it has excellent footnotes and an introduction.

The Admirable Crichton

What if Lord of the Flies happened, except everyone is adult and civilised? Of course, this was written decades before William Golding's only good book and Barrie's aims were more by way of social satire via comedy of manners than getting in-yer-face with the underlying brutal savagery of human nature, papered over by civilisation. Which in turn was JG Ballard's favourite theme, though he probably never quite succeeded so spectacularly.

But back to Barrie: You can rip through this in no time and be gently amused but it's about an alien world for most of us - hardly anybody has even one live in servant any more of course, let alone an entire staff of hierarchically minded people presided over by a Butler who keeps everyone rigidly in their places. Probably why it's nowhere near as famous as a play about a boy who never grew up - because we all had a childhood, whenever or wherever we lived.

Peter Pan & When Wendy Grew Up

The Boy Who Never Grew Up: Tragic figure or victorius immortal? You decide. A clever, witty meditation on childhood, imagination and growing up, appreciable in contrasting ways by the young and the old in the audience. A challenge to stage, even now, I suspect, and an acting challenge for the cast, too, I would guess. Delightful, bitter-sweet and perhaps made more so by the addition of the short When Wendy Grew Up, often staged as a coda to the action of Peter Pan.

What Every Woman Knows

I don't really want to spoil the plot of this play at all. It's about a plain-looking woman who is under-estimated by everybody, written when the women's suffrage movement was under way but not yet successful and published first in the year 1918 - when women first got the vote in Britain. It's depressing how relevant this play is a century later.

I found it delightful - far better than either The Admirable Crichton or Peter Pan (and I liked both of those). Gentle comedy based on a preposterous initial incident leads to an examination of gender roles and questions particularly, what men value as compared to what they perhaps should.

Mary Rose

What an odd little play! Themes of magic, islands and suspended aging re-appear but the brevity leads to thin characterisation, thus making it less moving than perhaps it should be.

This book has been entered into some databases under the titles of the plays rather than the title of the book. If you are looking for it try searching under “The Admirable Crichton”.

Peter Pan is an amazing read. Act 1 is a masterpiece that can happily hold its head up in any company. What surprised me is that Peter Pan is dead. You'll notice that he is dressed in autumn leaves and cobwebs. So when he leaves his shadow behind, the shadow of death is in the nursery. When Wendy tries to touch him he says she must not, but cannot explain why. This is a reference to The Gospel of John 20:17 where the resurrected Jesus says “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Peter doesn't know why he can't be touched because he's only a little boy. The other God Peter is is Pan. Apparently, hunters used to whip his statue when they were unsuccessful, so there seems to be some sort of power over life and death and he was once famously proclaimed to be dead. All of which would make Captain Hook the devil… if indeed he and Peter are different people. Bear all this in mind and everything else in the play will follow, but like all great pieces of writing other interpretations are available. A previous owner of my copy left me his annotations. Most made perfect sense, but there were several apparently quite serious references to anuses that I could make nothing of.

I only came for the main show but stayed for the entire performance. The other three plays are evidence of a clever man at the top of his game and in total control of his craft. Flawless in construction with charming characters and all very funny. But each of them has a darker edge. Crichton and What Every Woman Knows will challenge you to consider your opinions of class and gender respectively. Mary Rose is frankly chilling. All the plays have certain idiosyncrasies of vision: obsessions with islands and the reversal of roles, for example, that make them very individual productions.

read for Scottish lit class!

This took me forever to finish (about six months). I have come to a conclusion: J.M. Barrie is such a boring writer!
I read years ago Peter Pan, the novel, and found it boring. I have always loved Peter Pan-movies and as a concept, but I didn't really enjoy the novel. Then I thought maybe I would enjoy it more as the original play. A version without boring descriptions and with a good pace... Turns out Barrie had edited his plays a lot and the length and details in the stage directions were insane. A lot wasn't even things that belonged in a stage direction. And once again the pace felt off and the descriptions nearly killed me.
The other three plays was just as boring and nothing special about them what so ever. A shame since two of them had nice equality-discussions about class and gender, but the executions just drained them.

I bought this book because I wanted to read the Peter Pan story. I didn't realize that Peter Pan was originally a play. I thought that the play was an adaption of what had been original prose. All and all it was an alright book but I am not too fond of reading plays.

The characters, especially Tinker Bell are nothing like the Disney version of the story. Personally, I think the Disney version is better.

Read for Compulsory Theatre Class

i only read the peter pan play but i’m counting it okay

The book and the play are not much different other than the book has more detail. J.M. Barrie seemed to rely very heavenly on his actors to portray story lines and themes that are not supported by the dialog. He has also weaved a play that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike.