Peter and Alice

by John Logan

  PETER PAN: Generally the pirate lagoon is more dangerous than the Indian camp.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Except when it’s the other way around.

  PETER PAN: Exactly! … It’ll be dark soon. Help me find some wood for a campfire.

  PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND assemble a campfire.

  ALICE: I went home that day and told my mother of our conversation in the darkroom. What I could understand of it… She didn’t let us see him after that. She made me burn all his letters. All that special purple ink he used, up in flames… A year later I received the manuscript of “Alice’s Adventures Underground” in the post. In his own hand, with his own drawings… I never thanked him.

  PETER: And you never saw him again?

  ALICE: Much later. When I was grown and married. We had tea with my sister Lorina… We were cordial strangers… The golden afternoon was over. I thought it was going to be endless. But it was as quick as the beating of a dragonfly’s wing.

  PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND ignite their representation of a campfire.

  ALICE and PETER are drawn toward it as well…it suggests CARROLL’s letters burning, the smoke drifting up.

  They all huddle by the fire, it’s warm and intimate… We’re in a beautiful representation of Neverland now.

  ALICE: Lord, as many days as are left to me, I’ll never forget those letters burning… It was the cruelest thing I’d ever seen: all the lovely words, all his heart’s devotion, gone. As if they never existed… It was the first time I realized that things don’t always stay the same… (she watches the smoke drift away)… There it goes; into the vapors… Should life really be that delicate?

  PETER: Life was supposed to be strong and hearty. Like a pirate.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: But sometimes it’s gossamer, like Tinker Bell.

  PETER PAN: Like a Mock Turtle’s tear… It gets cold at night in Neverland. He didn’t write about that.

  PETER PAN shivers, a little chilled.

  PETER unconsciously puts his arm around him.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: There is no night in Wonderland. No one sleeps much.

  PETER PAN: The Dormouse sleeps… The Mad Hatter I think.

  ALICE: Would the Mad Hatter dream about being sane?

  PETER: Believe me, he would.

  ALICE: And Peter Pan, what would he dream of?

  PETER PAN: Mother.

  ALICE takes in the lovely fire, the stillness, the beautiful nighttime setting.

  ALICE: It’s enchanting here.

  PETER: Oh yes…

  He wanders forward, holding PETER PAN by the hand.

  PETER: Neverland is enchanting; it always was to me… I remember the first time I saw the play. I thought it was all real, you remember?

  PETER PAN: Yes.

  PETER: I thought you were real and Captain Hook was real and the painted flats were endless vistas.

  PETER PAN: Aren’t they?

  PETER: If they were you would have flown off forever, never to be seen again, onto the next…enchantment.

  He leaves PETER PAN and steps forward alone.

  PETER: I wanted to live there, Mrs. Hargreaves… From my box, the first time I saw the play, my brothers at my side, Uncle Jim busy somewhere backstage, I saw Neverland come to life. It was real. It was real… And it was so beautiful… I could fly.

  PETER PAN: You can.

  PETER: After the performance Uncle Jim took us backstage. It was a mad bustle, even that was thrilling. I mean I knew it wasn’t actually real, I knew they were all actors, and we were in a theatre… But I needed to know if this place existed, if it were somehow true, even though it wasn’t real. So as the party was going on and everyone was celebrating I wandered onto the stage by myself. Just me… How large it was… I saw the painted backdrop of Neverland. The pirate ship…the wooden moon… And I closed my eyes and spread my arms… And it was true.

  ALICE: Through the looking glass…

  PETER: For a moment… Then I opened my eyes and heard the party, and Uncle Jim calling me, and my brothers laughing… And life went on.

  ALICE: But it was true.

  PETER: When I was a child.

  Beat.

  ALICE: So was Wonderland. I could chart every foot of it. But the depths of Mr. Carroll, those anguished letters… Those were the Jabberwocky, the dangerous, impenetrable things.

  PETER: Uncle Jim wrote letters too, compulsively, hundreds of them. He poured out his heart to us.

  ALICE: He did love you.

  PETER: Oh yes. But it was a melancholy kind of love, because it was always entwined with an inevitable sadness. He knew we were going to grow up and leave him alone… First George to Eton and Oxford and then Jack and then me and then Michael… Michael, who always set his truest course…

  BARRIE: Dear Michael, The Adelphi House is haunted tonight. I think your brother’s namesake is tapping at the window in search of his shadow. Sometimes I feel I’m in search of my shadow as well, but he’s busy with his mannish pursuits at Eton…

  PETER: They wrote to each other every single day from the time Michael went to school… Mountains of letters, oceans of words… Sometimes the separation was too much for Uncle Jim and he would go to Eton and stand on the fringes of the playing fields, watching him from a distance.

  ALICE: Like a lover.

  PETER: Like a sailor’s wife waiting for her husband to return from the sea.

  ALICE: And the letters…and the devotion that inspired them… all gone now…like a Mad Hatter’s dream…smoke and ash…a little dust in the corner of the box you keep your toys.

  She looks at PETER.

  ALICE: It is a love story, as you promised.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND hops up, breaks the mood, turning to PETER PAN:

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Come here, boy! Dance with me.

  PETER PAN: No!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Why not?

  PETER PAN: Because you’re very ugly.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: No I’m not.

  PETER PAN: Because I’ve many important things to do. There’s a staff meeting this morning and I’ve a luncheon appointment at Simpson’s.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: If this is a love story there has to be dancing.

  PETER PAN: Not with me!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Don’t you want to fall in love?

  PETER PAN: When I’m old and practically dead. And since I’m immortal, that’s never, so there.

  He stomps away.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND is hurt.

  ALICE steps forward and offers her hands.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND looks at her, smiles and takes her hands.

  Gentle music as they dance.

  REGINALD (REGGIE) HARGREAVES enters crisply, like a fresh breeze. He’s a good-looking, athletic, hearty young man. It is 1879.

  REGGIE: Alice Liddell, you promised me the next dance!

  ALICE turns to him, surprised.

  REGGIE: What are you staring at? I’ve been waiting over there all night like – what? – a Labrador or some other sad sort of whathaveyou. Come on! You won’t be so churlish as to renege!

  ALICE: Reggie…?

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND happily hands ALICE to REGGIE.

  REGGIE: Before we dance, I’ve got to say something to you. What I mean is…well… Let’s clap hands and make a go of it! Lord, what an ass I am! Sorry – didn’t mean to say “ass.” Blast it all! Sorry – didn’t mean to say–! Look what you do to me, Miss Liddell!

  She laughs. He’s charming in his inarticulate awkwardness.

  REGGIE: At least I made you laugh, that’s something.

  ALICE: You could always make me laugh.

  REGGIE: I’m an absurd fellow, no use hiding the fact, as if I could, you know me inside and out, those eyes of yours just – ah, what’s the word?! – Look here! I’m no scholar, that’s God’s truth. But I’m a more than commonly good shot and a good bat and a really top-notch spin bowler, I can speak some French, I’ve got an income and the estate will be whol
ly mine, and I’m nowhere near good enough for you, I think you might break if I touch you, not that I would ever touch you, with too much vigor I mean! But, but – Blast!

  He peters out.

  REGGIE: I’ve lost the words.

  ALICE: Shall I find them…?

  REGGIE: Please.

  ALICE: I wish you to be my wife.

  REGGIE: That’s the second part. The first is this… (He kneels.) … I love you. I shall always try to be worthy of you… Say you will be my wife, Miss Liddell.

  ALICE looks at him, but doesn’t answer.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: What are you waiting for?!

  ALICE: At the moment… I hesitated.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: But he’s so handsome!

  PETER PAN: (To ALICE IN WONDERLAND.) That’s the sort you like: thick-headed kneeling gallants. I’ll never kneel to anyone!

  PETER: Why did you hesitate?

  ALICE: I suddenly saw it as a compromise. I would be giving up too much… It was like I was my mother, watching Lorina put on her first corset: resignation to something vast, and helpless to change it.

  REGGIE slumps. He’s disheartened.

  REGGIE: Not much of a lark anymore, is this?

  ALICE: Reggie —

  REGGIE: I’m terribly sorry, Miss Liddell. Forgive me… (He stands, proceeds with some difficulty.) … I know you’ve been raised with certain expectations. You’ve been around scholars all your life; men of learning and polish. Surely that’s what you always imagined for yourself… And I know myself, that’s not me, never will be… I had hoped, I see now foolishly, that there was more to life.

  Beat.

  REGGIE: I’ll bid you goodnight.

  He starts to go.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Wait!

  He stops.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: (To ALICE.) Don’t let him go!

  ALICE: I wanted to be a writer when I was little, did you know that? I wanted to be an independent woman, like Jane Austen.

  ALICE IN WONDELAND: He’s a fine man and he loves you!

  ALICE: Or a poetess.

  ALICE IN WONDELAND: Look at him.

  ALICE: I wanted so much.

  Beat.

  She finally looks at REGGIE.

  ALICE: I will be your wife.

  REGGIE: Do you mean it?

  ALICE: Heart and soul.

  REGGIE springs to her.

  REGGIE: God, this is splendid! Dodged a bullet there! Now I’ve got to talk to your father, should have done that first. Blast! Got it all back-assed – sorry!

  He kisses her, ecstatic, and bounds away.

  ALICE is almost overcome.

  She touches her lips.

  Music builds to a glorious waltz.

  ALICE: We were married at Westminster Abbey… After the wedding he took me home. The only house I ever lived in outside my father’s.

  REGGIE: Place is called Cuffnells, damned if I can tell you why, been the family estate back to good old King so-andso-the-fourth. Some of the richest Hampshire earth going; plant a stone and it’ll grow… Let me present you. Shan’t bother with the names, can’t remember ’em myself half the time…

  He introduces the parade of servants. ALICE is in awe of the grandness of the house and the lifestyle.

  REGGIE: Butler, under-butler, cook, under-cook, footman, other footman, boot boy, coachman, groom, under-groom, head gardener, topiary gardener, under-gardener, and your seven pretty maids all in a row: ladies maid; scullery maid; laundry maid; kitchen maid; other kitchen maid; under-housemaid; other under-housemaid.

  PETER PAN: (To ALICE IN WONDERLAND.) Say that three times fast!

  REGGIE: You’re home, Queen Alice!

  A spirited waltz is heard. It’s a glittering ball at Cuffnells.

  ALICE: Who says Wonderland doesn’t exist? Who says there are no happy endings? Had I not found mine? … Days and nights of balls and fetes and tableau vivant on the lawns, riding to the hounds, into town for theatre and exhibitions, all those golden things that don’t exist anymore, like this music, like the waltz… And then the boys! Best of all, our boys… Alan and Rex and Caryl… Our three sons growing strong and true…

  PETER PAN: (To ALICE IN WONDERLAND.) Oh, all right! Stop looking at me with those great cow eyes!

  He dances with ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

  ALICE dances with REGGIE.

  BARRIE dances with CARROLL.

  Even PETER is charmed by the music and swirling couples.

  ALICE: And if as he aged he grew more conservative in his views, tending to be a little stern, a little mean…and if he never read a book, but played golf instead…and had clumsy affairs with those seven pretty maids…and I was the tiniest bit bored by it…by everything…and I would never be Jane Austen…and I took rather too much laudanum to sleep at all… Well, if that’s growing up it held no heartbreak for me. It was not Mr. Dodgson’s place called Adulthood, that darkroom horror… It was my life, and in the end my boys made it all worthwhile.

  PETER: Crawling over your lap like puppies.

  ALICE: My children. One more marvelous than the last… Alan and Rex and Caryl…

  PETER: George and Jack and Peter and Michael and Nico…

  CARROLL: Alice and Lorina and Edith…

  BARRIE: Wendy and Michael and John…

  ALICE: How could it ever end?

  PETER: If we could only stay here forever.

  ALICE: Stop the clock.

  PETER: Close the book.

  ALICE: Just one more endless summer.

  The music suddenly ends as PETER PAN breaks the mood.

  Boldly, to ALICE IN WONDERLAND:

  PETER PAN: I’ll never understand grown ups!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Nor I. They have perfectly good breast of guinea hen in front of them, they only want mutton.

  PETER PAN: Any time they’re happy, they can’t wait to be sad.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Never here and now, always there and later.

  PETER PAN: Always looking at the clock.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Looking over their shoulder.

  PETER PAN: Then back at the clock.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Time for this, time for that, never time for “well, here we are, isn’t it glorious?”

  PETER PAN: Go to a party, look at the cake, long for the cake, reach for the cake–

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Don’t eat the cake.

  PETER PAN: I love cake.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: I love pie.

  PETER PAN: He loves gin.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: And have you noticed – they’re always waiting for it to rain?

  PETER PAN: They carry umbrellas on the sunniest days – which is dangerous because if you’re attacked you need one hand for your cutlass and the other for your pistol.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Everyone knows that!

  PETER PAN: Maybe they forgot?

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Sometimes they don’t even have pistols.

  PETER PAN: What do they do when the Indians attack?!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: They’re always forgetting.

  PETER PAN: When they’re not always remembering.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: So there’s never time for tarts.

  PETER PAN: Or cutlasses or kites.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Or croquet!

  PETER PAN: Or dancing to the pipes in the deep, dark woods!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Like they used to.

  PETER PAN: I hear the pipes all the time!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She wasn’t always like this, mind, like she is now. She was wicked in her day.

  PETER PAN: The old lady? Not likely!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: That darling little sable brush? Pinched it.

  PETER PAN: Good for her!

  PETER: You didn’t!

  ALICE: Still have it!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: And she knew men. Grown up gentlemen I mean, in her day. A lot of them.

  ALICE: (Unpleasantly shocked.) Oh.

  PETER PAN: He carries a flas
k and drinks all the time.

  PETER: (Quickly to ALICE.) I told you that.

  PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND grow increasingly revelatory, but are entirely without rancor:

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She took lovers and then grew bored.

  PETER PAN: His children are embarrassed by his drinking.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She doesn’t love all her sons the same.

  ALICE: That’s not true!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: ’Tis.

  PETER PAN: He’s a great big liar too. Betrays his wife regularly, pretends she doesn’t know.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Does she know?

  PETER PAN: Of course she does! He doesn’t care.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She despises tradesmen and blackies and chinkies and pretty much anyone who’s not her.

  PETER PAN: He still lives on Barrie’s money.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She bites into her pillow and cries every night.

  PETER PAN: Barrie paid for the publishing house.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: But thinks other people crying is weakness.

  PETER PAN: Hates him, but takes the money.

  ALICE IN WONDELAND: She thinks about killing herself.

  PETER PAN: He’s hit his children.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She looks at the bottle of laudanum and wonders.

  PETER PAN: He fears he’s going mad.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: She’s forgotten how to play croquet.

  PETER PAN: He’s forgotten how to fly.

  ALICE tries to stop the scene:

  ALICE: Stop this.

  PETER: Mrs. Hargreaves…?

  ALICE: We need to stop this.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: You can’t tell us what to do.

  PETER PAN: Never could.

  ALICE: We need to stop right now!

  ALICE tries to escape. But PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND block her way; it’s like a game to them. She is increasingly distraught.

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Is this a game?

  PETER PAN: What are the rules?

  PETER: (Concerned.) Calm down, please…

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Maybe there are no rules!

  PETER PAN: Even better!

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND: And then of course she sent her sons to the war.

  The music and lighting change.

  It is now 1915... The trenches of France...young men off to war… perhaps the distant sound of battle.

  This affects ALICE and PETER strongly.

  PETER PAN is delighted: