If you believe, clap your hands!

Today I went to the theatre with work colleagues (including Acronymphomania) and random hangers on (including Cyclops and Sweet Potato Skying). The play was Peter Pan at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre.

The Lyceum is absolutely one of my favourite places in Edinburgh. It is such a beautiful theatre inside, and Cyclops and I go to most of the plays they put on.

Well Peter Pan is a story that I LOVE - as a child I must have listened to the audio book about fifty times and I pretty much know it off by heart.

This particular production of Peter Pan was pretty random. How to describe Tinkerbell for example...? Erm... well a fairy on a stick, carried by a man in a flying helmet and a tutu speaking only in sounds akin to a combination of Mexican and Polish. But somehow it worked!

The set was impressive - the kite turned into the crocodile and the bed turned into the pirate ship.

But this is what Peter Pan is all about, the magic and the fantasy of childhood. It was very well done, I genuinely found it spellbinding.

The kiddies were loving it and laughing away, although the section behind us were fairly excitable - some running around the aisles and a boy behind us repeatedly screaming "I don't believe in fairies". This could be largely explained by the massive volume of irn bru and sweeties that must have been consumed judging by the rubbish on the floor on the way out.

I think this is the first time I've seen the play as an adult, and it was interesting to take a more mature perspective. Ah, Peter, what a cad! He has Wendy and Tigerlily throwing themselves at him but he leads them on and stamps all over their hearts. Not on purpose of course, he's just in his own little world. To see Wendy besotted with Peter, and to see Peter's naive yet thoughtless disregard for her feelings was quite painful to watch. Yes, he loved her, he worshiped her, but he wanted a mother and she wanted a boyfriend. And of course he was the way he was because he wouldn't grow up. But Wendy was empowered, I think, because she gave it a good go and she allowed him a bit of time, but when he still couldn't see her as a woman in her own right she ditched him and went home to start again. Good for her!

It was an interesting commentary on women's role in society and the family dynamic.

I also learned something about myself tonight that I didn't know. I have always wondered why I have a big thing for guys who are cocky, silly, brave, childish, chivalrous, masculine, and ultimately vulnerable. And there he was in front of me tonight - the man of my dreams and the cause of many an unrequited crush over the years. Peter Pan.