JM Barrie | Bouquets & Brickbats

07/02/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

After a somewhat muddled attempt to helm a Marvel film (2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Sam Raimi heads back into the kind of territory that’s a better fit for his directorial skills. If Send Help initially seems like an odd choice of vehicle, it nonetheless features the kind of perfectly-judged horror tropes that he’s founded his reputation on. And if it’s vaguely reminiscent of JM Barrie’s 1902 play, The Admirable Crichton – with the gender roles reversed – well, that may just be coincidental.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) has worked for years as a strategist for an American financial institution and has become the right-hand woman of the company’s CEO. She’s confidently expecting a hard-earned promotion when his son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), takes over the business, but it’s clear from the outset that the smug new boss has a low opinion of Linda with her sensible shoes and her tuna salad sandwiches. He informs her that the role of Vice President will go to his bestie, Donovan (Xavier Samuel), who plays golf with him and knows not to take things too seriously. The fact that Don has even less business acumen than Bradley seems not to bother the latter one jot.

But Bradley is sensible enough to keep Linda on the team for an important trip to Thailand, where he fully expects her to use her skills to finalise the company’s upcoming merger with their Eastern counterparts. On the flight over, Donovan chances on an old audition tape that Linda has made for the survival reality show that she watches in her leisure time. He gleefully shows it to the others. The all-male team take great delight in mocking her ambitions… and then the plane is hit by a sudden storm and suddenly, nobody’s laughing any more.

Come morning, Linda and Bradley are the sole survivors of the crash, stranded on an apparently uninhabited island. Bradley has suffered a leg injury. And the tables are beginning to turn…

Raimi has always had a knack of leavening his horror tropes with well-timed gags and that’s a quality that’s very much to the fore here. The screening I attend is punctuated by gales of laughter and gasps of horror in pretty much equal measure. Okay, so a late stage ‘revelation’ may not be quite the surprise that screenwriters Damon Shannon and Mark Swift were presumably aiming for, but there are nonetheless plenty of other unexpected twists and turns in the narrative that I really don’t see coming.

Both McAdams and O’Brien supply impressively nuanced performances (the film is essentially a two-hander) and, whenever I start to warm to one or the other of them, something happens to push me back in the opposite direction. But the overarching message about toxic masculinity comes through loud and clear and, no matter how devious Linda Liddle becomes, I can’t help rooting for her – even when she’s puking in the face of the person she’s attempting to deliver the kiss of life to.

Raimi aficionados will need to keep a very sharp eye out for the inevitable Bruce Campbell cameo – blink and you’ll surely miss it – but it is there.

Send Help is fast, frenetic and perfectly paced. It’s good to have the veteran director back in the driving seat with his foot on the accelerator.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

01/12/23

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s that time of year again – oh yes, it is. We’re sitting in the Festival Theatre, where there’s a very festive atmosphere. Behind us, two rows of Cubs and Brownies chatter excitedly, waving light-up wands and eating vast amounts of chocolate. Families, including adults, are no less giddy. Christmas outfits are clearly de rigeur: there’s an abundance of baubles and sparkle, from headbands to socks and every item in between. We’re soon caught up in the fun.

This year’s theme (and it is a theme, rather than a story) is Peter Pan. This version of the tale (written by Harry Michaels and Allan Stewart) takes the form of a sequel to JM Barrie’s original. Even though his old adversary, Captain Hook (Grant Stott) was eaten by Jock the Big Green Croc a long time ago, Peter Pan (Kieran Lynch) is in trouble: the pixie dust that allows him to fly has disappeared from the magic waterfall, leaving him grounded. He sends Tink (Rebecca Stenhouse) to fetch his old friend, Wendy (Robyn Whyte), to see if she can help. It soon transpires that somehow Hook has returned, and that he’s behind the problem… Can he and Starkey (Clare Gray) persuade the erstwhile ship’s cook, May McSmee (Stewart) and her son (Jordan Young), to rejoin his crew?

This Peter Panto is as big and bold a show as we’ve come to expect. Crossroads’ production values are always impressive: the costumes lavish, the props spectacular. The opening sequence sets the standard, with a beautifully animated video-projection that leads us straight into the fantasy. The lighting (by Jack Ryan) is very clever, transforming the same set in an instant from a pretty pastel fairyland into a terrifying red-hued pirate lair. The sound (by Guy Coletta and Andrew Kirkby) is dialled way past eleven, immersing us in Neverland. And there are pyrotechnics a-plenty too.

Pantomime survives by being endlessly adaptable, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the casting of Flawless as Hook’s pirate crew. This is a masterstroke, lending the pantomime some real edge, as the street dancers inject a dose of cool into the cheesiness. What seems on paper like an odd marriage, in fact works really well within the piece. It’s not just their awe-inspiring dance moves, but their presence as a kind of Greek chorus, observing the ridiculous antics around them and providing a silent commentary and response.

Stewart and Stott are the lynchpins, and this is a silver panto-versary for both of them. Their onstage rapport is legendary, and it lives up to the hype. They know how to work together to mine the laughs, and always give the impression that they’re having the time of their lives. Stewart is a fabulous Dame – his Aunty May can’t help but dominate every scene she’s in – and Stott clearly relishes his cartoonish villainy. Jordan Young fits in well as the still new-ish number three (following Andy Gray’s sad demise), and his clowning is superb.

There are a couple of negatives. It’s no secret that plot always comes second to tropes in a panto but the balance shifts a little too far here. The storyline gets lost: Peter Pan and Wendy are sidelined and Captain Hook’s redemption doesn’t really register. What’s more, the climactic moment when Peter Pan finally flies again (I’m not counting that as a spoiler – the only surprise would be if he didn’t) just isn’t as impressive as it should be. We’ve already seen Tink take to the air, after all, so it’s a little underwhelming when Peter just follows the same trajectory. I don’t think it helps that the cast look out into the auditorium when they’re wondering where Peter is, so that the audience follow their guidance and look up, prepared to see him appear above our heads; it’s an anticlimax when he simply descends from the flies on strings and flutters across the stage. In any other production, this would be enough, but our expectations have been elevated by the amazing animatronic crocodile and other effects.

But it seems churlish to dwell on these niggles when everything is nigh-on perfect and we’re having so much fun. The Pantomime Adventures of Peter Pan is on until Hogmanay, so grab yourself a ticket, dig out your Santa deeley-boppers and head on down to the Festival Theatre for a few hours of sheer joy.

5 stars

Susan Singfield