Where the magic happens

AS DAVE MCNEILLY walks me from the backstage door through the belly of the Grand Canal Theatre he cuts an unexpectedly calm figure.

Dressed casually in a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans, it is hard to tell that the associate producer of Peter Pan the Musical is partly responsible for the world premiere of a show costing €2.2 million and involving a cast and crew of approximately 80 people.

“We’ve got a cast of 21 and then there are 16 local children playing The Lost Boys,” he says. “In terms of crew; I’ll put it to you this way, we’ve taken out 614 hotel nights. And that’s condensed into three or four weeks. So that’s quite a lot of people.”

It most certainly is. And on stage approximately 15 of that crew — mostly men and mostly huge — are hastily going about their business in preparation for the Friday night preview. Some sweep around the main stage while others climb like Spider-Man (don’t mention the war) up the scaffolds and into the web of steel girders and beams, from where you can hear the whirring of drills and the thud of hammers.

Five truckloads of lights, projectors, props and pieces of set have made their way across the Irish Sea from Lincoln. They have been unloaded and now the final pieces of this Peter Pan jigsaw are being put in place.

It is an impressive set. Four huge arches depicting wondrous blue sky land with tumbling fluffy clouds recede behind each other to create a fantastical Never Never Land tunnel. Across the final arch, a huge screen hangs redundant; waiting for projections of forests and seas that were shot by Duncan McLean on the Scottish Island of Eilean Shona — an island “with five cottages and nobody on it” where JM Barrie wrote part of the original Peter Pan.

For now, a single unwavering skull and crossbones sits menacingly on the screen.

The sickly blue and purple hue of Captain Hook’s devious pirateship is docked slightly hidden behind this cranial crest. Suddenly but effortlessly, the bow of the ship sets sail and comes centre-stage. It opens like a slow yawn and the stage becomes the deck of the ship. Later, Hook’s fiendish cohorts will climb the masts and battle the Lost Boys while Peter takes on his one-armed foe.

Hidden in behind the feet of the first arch is Wendy’s nursery — a cutesy room of pinks and blues, and above my head are the totem pole and jungle trees of Tiger Lily’s Indian tribespeople which will descend when the time is right.

All of these mini-sets within the set must be coordinated with the perfect precision of an Olympic synchronised swimming team. The 10 operators will have to be smooth operators or else they might just be sent to walk the plank or be tied to a pole on the dreaded marooner’s rock where they will be left to drown — metaphorically, of course.

The big selling point of this production is Peter’s ability to fly. We are assured that this system (or is it magic?) is indeed the real deal with no… er… strings attached — not visibly at least.

“At some stage in the show, Peter will fly from the stage over the audience’s head and right to the very top of the auditorium,” says McNeilly, raising his eyes to heaven and pointing to the distance. “We had Peter flying in a production we did a long time ago but what we’re using here is brand new. The whole thing is completely computerised, which gives much better effects and a lot more fluidity. It will make it look a lot more magical.”

When I ask McNeilly what that system is, he comes over all coy.

“We don’t want to give too much away,” he says with a smile. “It’s the speciality of the show. It’s what the whole show is based on but it’s very clever indeed.”

Up, up and away from the hub of the action, an 11-strong orchestra are practising the new score in the bar that looks out on Grand Canal Dock. The conductor is your classic clichéd conductor — all hair and jumpy moves. His jerky gestures seem extravagant when compared to the harpist’s breezy introduction and the flautist’s cheeky cameo. We decide to leave them to it.

Up on the fifth floor, I walk in on costume designers Laurie Simmerling and Britt Beale who are busy sowing, cutting and making the final adjustments before Friday. When I ask them which is the most challenging of all the pieces they answer without hesitation.

“Peter Pan,” says Beale as she pierces part of the hero’s green-leafed outfit. “Working around his harness. It’s quite chunky and it’s hard to make him look slim and trim. The harness goes all around the front, you see.”

Beale, Simmerling and their two colleagues, who are out shopping for the show when we drop in, have been involved from start to finish.

“Michael Rose (producer) said, ‘we want more of a Pirates of the Caribbean look instead of a typical Hook look’,” says Simmerling, flicking through her impressive design book. “So we went with that sort of idea; so they’re dirtier and a bit more dishevelled and distressed.”

Neither woman would be drawn on whether they preferred fitting Pan (Daniel Boys) or Hook (Ben Richards), but their giggles suggest that they enjoyed both.

Just down the corridor from costumes I meet the affable Richard Mawbey who looks freakishly like Irish artist Robert Ballagh and who has worked in hair design for 30 years. We are surrounded by wigs of faceless squaws and bandits and all around us, little chopped-off curls of hair and fabric lie on the whitewash floor. Each wig has been custom made to fit each actor.

“I make shapes of everybody’s head,” says Mawbey. “And then we make the wigs on blocks so they’re modelled to the shape of the head. They come to visit me in London. So we would have done all of this about six weeks ago.”

For Mawbey, it is not just a question of plonking some old piece of mop on top of someone and letting them go on stage. There is, he feels, a deeper psychological aspect to his craft.

“Working in wigs, you’re a bit like a confidante,” he says. “The performers trust you. You’re often with them just before they go on stage. If they feel they look right, that’s an awful lot of getting the whole thing together.”

Head of production Michael Rose fell in love with Dublin when he brought Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the Grand Canal Theatre last year. He cites the facilities at the theatre and the atmosphere in the capital as the main reasons for holding the new musical’s première here.

“It’s an extraordinary building [Grand Canal Theatre],” says Rose. “It takes the best of traditional styles and acoustics, viewing points and seating and couples them with all the marvellous new technology.”

Technology plays a starring role in this version of Peter Pan but we won’t give too much away. The secrets of Never Never Land can never be betrayed.

Peter Pan the Musical runs at the Grand Canal Theatre until August 6; info: www.grandcanaltheatre.ie.