Review: Cute but Uninspired FINDING NEVERLAND at Paramount

Lord, save us from pop songwriters who think they can write musical theater. Sure, some transition successfully but this would not be the case for Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy who have given us the completely unmemorable "Finding Neverland", currently playing at the Paramount Theatre. And if the lackluster music weren't enough, the show is also weighed down by a book from James Graham and direction from Diane Paulus who it seems had no idea what story they wanted to tell as there seemed to be two distinct shows happening and neither of them were very good.

Based on the movie starring Johnny Depp and the play from Allan Knee, we follow the life of J.M. Barrie (Kevin Kern), a playwright who has had some moderate success but now seems to be in a rut, much to the chagrin of his producer Charles Frohman (Tom Hewitt). That is until one day he meets widowed Sylvia (Christine Dwyer) and her four sons George, Peter, Jack, and Michael (Finn Faulconer, Ben Krieger, Mitchell Wray, and Jordan Cole) as they are playing in the park. He develops a bond with the boys and their mother, which eventually leads him to write his most notable work, "Peter Pan".

The basic plot points from the movie are there but they're vaguely touched upon lending nothing for character development and feel rushed, contrived and forced. Plus there's the show's schizophrenic nature where sometimes it wants to be a touching drama and other times it goes for campy romp and neither show quite knows who this story is about. Is it Barrie? Sylvia? The kids? Or is it about the overly mugging butler who, along with every other ensemble member of the show, seems to have been instructed to take every gesture, expression and moment and make them as broad and over the top as possible even though the leads are playing it straight. And the jokes in the show are equally as broad and feel completely out of place. Case in point, at the top of Act Two in the span of a few minutes we got a gay joke and a WTF moment in that an actor actually looked at the audience and mouthed "what the f**k" leaving me with the same question.

The utterly forgettable music is no help with nothing that moves any plot point along but rather only serves to punctuate the moment we just completed in the scene. And the poppy nature of the songs not only feels out of place in the time period but also lacks much sense or meaning. Barrie sings about being "stronger" but stronger than what and why? Another moment he sings to a grief stricken Peter that things look better "when your feet don't touch the ground" but never quite gets to how he would achieve this. Vague platitudes like this with no connection may work in pop songs but in musical theater you need to convey the "how" and "why" and not just the "what".

The cast is descent but not given much from the script. Kern is likable but lacks character development or much of an arc to hook into. The same could be said for Dwyer who manages a belty ballad fairly well in Act One but we don't really know her so it just sits there. The kids are fine and not overly cloying, unlike the rest of the cast. And the amazing Tom Hewitt is utterly wasted in a role that could be played by a chair.

It may sound like I thoroughly hated this show and the evening I spent with it but I did not. It's a passable diversion and there is some absolutely magical technical wizardry especially at the end but wizardry can only take you so far if you don't have the show to back it up. And so with my three letter rating system I give it an uninspired MEH-. It's a descent enough show to bring the kids to but for a musical theater lover who wants more than spectacle, it completely misses the mark.

"Finding Neverland" performs at the Paramount Theatre through January 15th. For tickets or information visit the Seattle Theatre Group online at www.stgpresents.org.

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