Review: The Boy James, Southwark Playhouse

Written for Time Out

Portraits of JM Barrie inevitably draw too heavily on Peter Pan, as if the man behind the boy who never grew up can only be calibrated in relation to childhood. In fact, Barrie's work often grappled with very adult concerns, advocating socialism and sexual equality. Even next to more blinkered examples, Belt Up's piece is too slight and too reductive to function as biographical study.

Better taken as a fable for lost youth, The Boy James shows an ashen-faced, middle-aged man (James Wilkes) haunted by spectres of childhood. A pyjama-clad boy clambers around his study, begging for imaginary adventures. That eager innocence, however, is punctured when a girlish waif, newly dropped from the chimney, forces both whisky and herself on the boy.

With smartly restrained interaction, Belt Up involve us without patronising. Tender and momentarily harrowing, The Boy James ends on a terrific note of accusation. We, each of us, have let this happen - both to the boy and, by extension, to ourselves.

All these better elements are somewhat scuffed by naivety. Scruffy signposting muddles the narrative. The abuse suffered by the boy (played with fidgety sentimentality by Jethro Compton) could just as easily be real, with Lucy Farrett's Girl a hallucination born of dissociation. There's promise here, but to achieve real potency, it needs distilling.