Over the last hundred years this story has itself taken wing. Peter Pan’s name is now used symbolically for a bus company (speedy, thrilling travel), a brand of peanut butter (childhood treats), and shops, motels, and restaurants all over the world. A psychological disorder, the Peter Pan Syndrome, has also been named after Barrie’s hero. This unfortunate condition, according to the formerly best-selling book of the same name by Dr. Dan Kiley, published in 1983, afflicts a great many American men. Unlike the original Peter Pan, the victims of Peter Pan Syndrome don’t want to remain children; instead they are stuck in adolescence... This is all the fault of their parents: fathers who are cold and distant and mean; mothers who are weak and needy and neurotically emotional.
Good grief. That's a lot of baggage for a little boy who doesn't want to grow up. Still, that idea has an amazing appeal. If you're a kid, the idea of not growing up is pretty attractive. If you're an adult, the idea of being a kid is pretty attractive. If you watch the musical, the moment that will grab at your throat and mist over your eyes is at the end, when the boy Peter returns and faces Wendy once again, disappointed and somewhat accusatory at her committing the cardinal sin of growing up.
For people of my generation, the classic Pan was Mary Martin and the classic Hook was Cyril Ritchard. The play was aired regularly on TV, although probably not as regularly as The Wizard of Oz. Still, it was this version, and not the Disney one, that stuck overall, although Disney's Tinker Bell takes the award for overall cultural hegemony, Peter Pan division. Lurie's article is very much worth reading for even dabblers in Peter Pania. One thing she leaves out that I read once, and which I really love, is the idea that in the play, Hook, always a dual performance with the children's father, was in one early version going to be a dual performance with the children's mother! Let your psychologists have at that!
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