by John Logan
PETER PAN: Oh well done! Now we’re going to have some action! No more dancing! Time for some fisticuffs, my lady!
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Boys! You’re only happy with dirt on your knees and blood on your nose.
PETER PAN begins to play his pipe. The tune eventually turns melancholy.
ALICE: Is there a moment you grow up? … Not an evolution, not the passage of a summer or a year. A single moment… Perhaps it was when my boys first put on their uniforms. The moment it all changed.
CARROLL: You must hold still, Alice…
ALICE: When everything fell to pieces.
PETER: Like Humpty-Dumpty.
ALICE: Cracked apart.
PETER: Into a thousand pieces.
BARRIE: To fight, and fly, and fight again…
ALICE: The whole fiction of my comfortable life.
PETER: Never to make sense again.
ALICE: Never.
PETER PAN: I don’t know that word.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: It’s a twelve-year-old word in truth.
PETER: Once the war came, everything you thought you knew…
ALICE: Was wrong.
PETER: The answer is yes. There’s a moment. One day I killed a man, you see. In the deep, dark woods. The forest was choked up with bodies and mud. I was knee deep in it. If you step on a body you can split the stomach and release the gasses, and the stench is appalling, so I was looking down, trying not to step on any corpses, I looked up and the fellow was suddenly just there in front of me and I shot him…
ALICE: I sent my boys off to the war. So handsome in their uniforms. So smart they were.
PETER PAN: How clever I am. Oh, the cleverness of me.
PETER: I didn’t even know if he was a German, his uniform was so muddy. I just shot him in the chest. I was so scared… I sat down on the ground and watched him die. I knew he was dead when he didn’t move, but the fleas did. They crawled away from him, like they knew, like they were abandoning him, it was so sad… I sat on the ground and I watched him die… Then I went mad.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: But I don’t want to go among mad people!
PETER PAN: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: How do you know I’m mad?
PETER PAN: You must be. Or you wouldn’t have come here.
PETER: Shell-shock they call it, but it wasn’t a shock. It was a numbing. I felt absolutely nothing as my life cracked open and spilled out of my head, started pooling around my feet… I was seconded home, in shame. I went to asylums. Light bulb never off: suicide watch. Rubber mouth guard so I wouldn’t bite my tongue off… But my life was still pooling around my feet. I couldn’t stop it. I was all cracked open.
ALICE: I saw my boys go away to war… And everything that had ever happened in my life led me to believe they would return.
ALICE waits.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND goes to ALICE, wiser than her years:
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains… But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter no more than a little dust in the box in which she kept her toys…
The moment has come.
It’s inevitable.
PETER PAN: Third Battalion barracks. Company C. 10th May 1915… Officially reported that Captain Alan Hargreaves killed in action 9 May 1915 please to convey deep regret and sympathy of their Majesties the King and Queen and Commonwealth government in loss that parents have sustained in death soldier reply paid Colonel Boscombe.
ALICE is shattered.
PETER PAN: … officially reported that Second Lieutenant George Llewelyn Davies killed in action 15th March 1915 please to convey deep regret and sympathy…
PETER: And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men…
PETER PAN: … officially reported that Captain Rex Hargreaves killed in action 25th September 1916 please to convey deep regret and sympathy…
ALICE is going to collapse.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND quickly brings a chair.
ALICE sits.
She is lost in herself.
PETER as well.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND wanders into the no-man’s-land of the war.
A beat as she takes in the desolation…and then turns to CARROLL tenderly:
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: In the place called Adulthood there are no Cheshire Cats…for they can’t endure the suffering of the place.
CARROLL steps to her.
Beat.
He bows deeply.
CARROLL: Queen Alice.
He begins to leave the stage, but…
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Mister Dodgson…
He stops.
She bows to him.
He is touched by the gesture.
He then leaves the stage, and the story.
Beat.
MICHAEL DAVIES enters. He’s a beautiful and poetic young man, fragile.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: My, he’s handsome… Maybe he’ll dance with me.
PETER PAN: He won’t.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Who is he?
PETER PAN: Michael… My shadow.
PETER: (To BARRIE.) You used to stand on the fringes of the playing fields, watching him…
BARRIE: I cannot picture a summer day that does not have Michael skipping in front. That is summer to me…
PETER: Uncle Jim… White or black?
Beat.
BARRIE: Black.
BARRIE and PETER sit, play chess. MICHAEL hovers near them, he’s nervous about something.
They are in BARRIE’s palatial flat at the Adelphi Terrace, where MICHAEL lives when he’s not at Oxford. It is 1921.
MICHAEL: Uncle Jim, I’d thought I’d bring my friend Buxton up to town next weekend. I think you’d like him.
BARRIE: I need a pipe.
MICHAEL: Let me.
He cleans, prepares and fills BARRIE’s pipe during the following. It’s quietly domestic.
PETER: Your move.
BARRIE: You’re thinking strategically.
PETER: Played a lot in the war. And not too much else to do in the nutter hospital.
BARRIE: I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.
PETER: Sorry, “sanitarium.” Oh yes, that’s much better.
MICHAEL: (Continuing to BARRIE.) I know you don’t always approve of my mates from school but Buxton’s your sort, not a playwright I mean, but exceptional really. Sort of a poet, I guess.
BARRIE: Do what you wish, Michael.
MICHAEL: That means you’d rather I didn’t.
BARRIE: It means nothing of the sort.
PETER: A poet?
MICHAEL: Sort of a poet, yes.
PETER: What sort?
MICHAEL: I meant he writes poetry.
BARRIE makes a move on the chessboard.
PETER: You’re not thinking.
He quickly takes a piece.
They play for a moment as MICHAEL continues to prepare BARRIE’s pipe.
BARRIE: (To MICHAEL.) Only I see you so rarely.
MICHAEL: So you’d rather I didn’t bring him?
PETER: Oh just bring him!
MICHAEL: Not if Uncle Jim doesn’t want me to.
BARRIE: I’ve no hold on you, Michael, you’re twenty years old, do as you like.
MICHAEL: Oh God!
PETER: Just bring him!
MICHAEL: I want you to meet him. It’s important to me.
BARRIE: Why?
MICHAEL: Because he’s my friend.
BARRIE: Your “poet” friend.
MICHAEL: I suppose.
BARRIE: You’ve a lot of friends.
MICHAEL: Do I?
BARRIE: And now a “poet.”
MICHAEL: Yes, I–
BARRIE: What next, I wonder?
PETER: (To BARRIE.) Don’t.
MICHAEL: Look – It’s because I – I want you to know him. It m
eans something to me that you know him.
BARRIE: What are you trying to say?
MICHAEL: We’ve talked about going away, that’s all.
BARRIE and PETER stop.
PETER: Going where?
MICHAEL: France. Paris… To study painting.
BARRIE: You’ll do no such thing.
PETER: Painting?
MICHAEL: Yes! Painting! I want to study painting. Buxton says I’ve got some talent and we ought to chuck it here and go off to Paris for a while and make a go of it.
BARRIE: I won’t hear a word of it. You’re being childish.
PETER: Stop it.
BARRIE: (Ice.) I’ll speak my mind in my own house if you’ll allow me that… (To MICHAEL.) … You’ve got to finish your studies and be a practical man. You’ve got to grow up, lad. Do you think I’m going to pay your tradesman’s bills forever?
This strikes like an arrow.
BARRIE: I’ve no interest in pictures myself. Don’t see the point of them. Lot of cloud-spinning, I’ve always thought. But if that’s what you want to do, live that sort of life… Bohemian… Is that what you’d call it? … Michael… Bohemian?
MICHAEL: I don’t know.
BARRIE: Whatever you call it, who am I to stop you? Do what you will. I don’t need to meet this “poet” of yours.
MICHAEL is near tears.
BARRIE: I’ll have my pipe now.
MICHAEL hands him his pipe and quickly moves away from the scene; upset.
PETER PAN impulsively goes to comfort him. The lights change as they move away, isolated in their togetherness.
ALICE: You ought to be ashamed of yourself, said Alice, a great girl like you to go on crying in this way! Stop it this moment, I tell you…
PETER PAN: But she went on just the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all around her, and reaching half down the hall…
ALICE: Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea…
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears that she had wept…
MICHAEL: I wish I hadn’t cried so much, said Alice. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears.
BARRIE: Dear Arthur, Every year since your death I have written to tell you of your sons and their progress through life. I’ve tucked the letters away into a neat bundle, tied with a ribbon. Never did I think I could have a more difficult composition than that of 1915 when we lost George…
Light like rippling water begins to isolate MICHAEL and PETER PAN.
BARRIE: But this year, in the month of May, 19th of the month, Michael and his friend Buxton went to Sandford Pond, a few miles south of Oxford. Perhaps you recall it? It’s a place where many of the boys swim…
PETER: I went there later, Mrs. Hargreaves. The water is placid.
BARRIE: They stepped into the water together…
PETER: Witnesses saw two men holding each other, not struggling, quite still in the water…
PETER PAN: The most haunting time to see the mermaids is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then…
BARRIE: The distance from bank to bank is too small for the question of swimming capacity to enter into it at all…
MICHAEL: Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted and lay on the boy’s arms. With a last effort, Peter pulled her up the rock and then lay down beside her. He knew that they would soon be drowned…
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Wendy was crying for this was the first tragedy she had seen…
PETER PAN: Peter had seen many tragedies; but he had forgotten them all…
PETER: The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged…
BARRIE: They were not struggling. They were not trying to save each other…
MICHAEL: By and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon…
BARRIE: Or maybe, Arthur, in the end they did save each other…
PETER: Peter Pan was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last…
ALICE: A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea…
MICHAEL: But the next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him…
PETER PAN: To die will be an awfully big adventure!
Lights change.
BARRIE stands in shock.
PETER is in his own thoughts.
ALICE has remained seated.
PETER: And you wonder I call it a lie? … That play… That book.
ALICE: Oh yes, it’s a lie.
PETER: Maybe there was a time I believed it, but life, Mrs. Hargreaves…
ALICE: Oh yes.
PETER: Peter and Alice… Shards of youth… I’m no more Peter Pan than you’re Alice in Wonderland. We are what life has made us.
He looks to BARRIE.
PETER: Even he finally had to realize the same thing I have: the only reason boys don’t grow up is because they die… Isn’t that true, Uncle Jim?
Beat.
BARRIE: It is.
He leaves the stage, and the story.
PETER: There are no mermaid lagoons; there are still, deep waters where lonely boys drown themselves. There are no pirate captains; there are trenches and bullets and razor wire. We do not fly, Mrs. Hargreaves, nor could we ever.
PETER PAN: Speak for yourself!
PETER: Stop it.
PETER PAN: Don’t you ever get tired of blaming me for your miserable life?
PETER: You’re the glass that distorted everything.
PETER PAN: Honestly! I fly through the night, skip on the clouds, sing in the forest, fight me some pirates, what harm have I ever done you? If you’re broken, you broke yourself. I won’t even remember you tomorrow.
ALICE: You talk to him like he’s real.
PETER PAN: I am real!
PETER: He’s not.
ALICE: Hard to tell sometimes.
PETER: Not for me.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: But then you think you’re going mad.
PETER PAN: We’re all mad here.
PETER: Be quiet!
PETER PAN: Someone get him his mouth guard.
PETER: He doesn’t exist! – (To ALICE IN WONDERLAND.) – Neither do you! This is demented.
PETER PAN: You’re the expert on that.
PETER: None of this is real.
ALICE: I wonder who’s more real, Peter Davies or Peter Pan?
PETER PAN: Bully for her!
ALICE: In a hundred years no one will ever remember Alice Liddell. And no one will ever forget Alice in Wonderland… Now you tell me who’s more real.
PETER: Mrs. Hargreaves… We can’t live in a fantasy. Reality may be hard, but it’s all we have.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Wendy felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy…
PETER: Maybe there was a time but… The war ditched me really, and then Michael’s death. The nightmares are pretty unspeakable. You see, when I close my eyes I see them, my family…and I feel…I feel they are waiting for me. As if I would be betraying them if I didn’t join them: for we are a family defined by our sadness… To this day I’m frightened to close my eyes, because when I do I see them, that line of corpses, lunging for me in the dark… My father, gaping in that monstrous leather jaw… My mother, falling in the parlor, hand outstretched… My brother George, bloody hands gripping the barbed wire tight… My brother Michael, eyes staring up, sinking down, reaching for me… I see them… Even now…even now…
He closes his eyes.
Keeps them closed.
PETER: Do you see them?
This is harrowing for him.
PETER: I want to hear the mermaids singing to the moon… I want to be young, with my brothers… I want to be sane again and whole… I want… I want…to jump on the wind’s back and away we go…
PETER: But here we are. Awake again. Into truth.
ALICE: I can’t afford your truth. I need mine.
PETER: Even if it’s not real?
A beat as she gazes at him.
She finally stands.
It’s a little difficult getting up. She feels her age.
She looks at him: dead on.
ALICE: Shall I tell you about reality, young man? … When my son Alan was killed in the war, and my son Rex was killed in the war, I thought I could not know more suffering. My husband did not recover from the shock, honestly. He did not understand where his boys had gone. He got very old and I with him. He died six years ago, my gallant Mr. Hargreaves. After 46 years of marriage.
Beat.
ALICE: It was then I learned the estate was in less than ideal shape. He had not overseen our finances with the acumen I had expected. That fell to me. I found I could no longer afford to keep the staff intact; those seven pretty maids are no more, Mr. Davies. Cuffnells is a large house and expensive to maintain, so I’ve closed most of the rooms and spend my days in the library, at the top of the house, where there’s little heat and it’s very drafty… As I told you, I sold Mr. Dodgson’s manuscript for the money. Because I had to… But what will I sell next year?
Beat.
ALICE: My son Caryl and his wife look in on me every now and then, but I bore them so they find excuses to come less and less. My father and mother are long since dead, so too my sisters, so too my friends. No one comes to visit me. I see no one. I am alone… Do you know what it is to be 80 years old and sick and alone? Do you know that truth, Mr. Davies?
Beat.
ALICE: And if I sit there in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I’m not?
She advances on him:
ALICE: I can be the lonely old woman in the drafty room or I can be Alice in Wonderland… I choose Alice.
Beat.
ALICE: So, now the choice is yours.
PETER: I don’t know what you mean.
ALICE: It’s your life. Not Mr. Barrie’s. Not your brother’s. Yours… So choose.
PETER: What would you have me do?
ALICE: I would have you live.
PETER: Believe in fairies?
ALICE: Why not?
PETER: Dance to the pipes in the deep, dark woods?
ALICE: Take my hand. We’ll go together.