Peter Pan Live Was the Worst Three-Hour Drag Show We've Ever Seen

Wild_(Theatrical_Trailer)_HD. by mohammadkamranrao

Good God. NBC's live production of Peter Pan was not at all what we had hoped for: Props falling, props falling on Allison Williams or Christopher Walken, someone forgetting their lines and doing an Ashlee Simpson jig. No, instead we were forced to endure a three-hour college musical theater show whose dullness was punctuated with impressive gayness.

What was apparent from the show's first song is that the production's audio was...off. Or something wasn't quite right. The sound was either partially lip synched or the actors relied on loud backing vocals—everything sounded pre-recorded. One theory: The audio being played back was recorded from a dress rehearsal.

Then Allison Williams swooped into those kids' bedroom like a demon haunting a terrible nightmare. And she did this.

Allison Williams has the whitest teeth on this planet and likely others. Her face is a canvas for emotions, primarily abject terror.

When she implored us to believe, so Tinkerbell the iPhone ringtone could fly again, she scarred some children for life. When they wake in the middle of the night, dripping in cold sweat, fearful that the shadows being cast by their nightlight could be Allison Williams coming to drag them from beneath their covers and devour them whole, it's because of this:

And then Christopher Walken, with his drawn-on eyebrows and barely-contained drawl, limped through his songs and scenes as a sexually ambiguous Captain Hook. Here's him "tap" "dancing":

At one point, he couldn't even be bothered to lip synch. He must have been as bored as us.

Then there's the Lost Boys, or Allison Williams' cadre of adult men jumping around her fabulously, always singing, their quads perpetually flexed. They go up in a treehouse and it's like Peter Pan and has his own den of gay men.

The whole production, really, was gay as hell. I'm convinced they compelled Christopher Walken to play Hook by telling him, "It's basically a three-hour drag show and you get to wear a ridiculous wig, it'll be great." Look at this shit:

Mostly, it was boring. This is not so much a knock against the alleged timelessness of J.M. Barrie's story, but rather the strictness of this particular production. The entire press cycle leading up to last night's show was all furrowed brows by the cast and producers as they expressed the supposed terror of enduring the same critical drubbing suffered by last year's The Sound of Music.

There was this insistence that the show be so professional, that it be taken seriously. So serious, apparently, no one was allowed to have any fun. The problem with this Peter Pan was that it was a joyless snore. No wonder Wendy didn't want to be a kid forever—Peter Pan made being a kid in Neverland look like such a chore.