Oklahoma native helps update Indigenous role in 'Peter Pan' national tour
Brandy McDonnell
- A new national tour of "Peter Pan" features revisions to the musical by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse.
- The revisions offer a more empowering representation of Tiger Lily and the Indigenous people of Neverland.
- The updated script replaces the culturally insensitive song "Ugg-a-Wugg" with a new number called "Friends Forever."
For more than 100 years, Peter Pan has been bringing his lofty tale of adventure to the stage, with many of the same familiar hallmarks.
The mischievous "Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" dreamed up by Scottish writer J.M. Barrie soars through the skies with his fairy friend, Tinker Bell, and meets Wendy Darling and her younger brothers, John and Michael, when he zips in through a window of their family home.
With a sprinkling of fairy dust and some happy thoughts, Peter whisks the Darling children away to Neverland, where they take up with Peter's ragtag band of "Lost Boys," cross swords with the fearsome pirate Captain Hook and encounter other denizens of the enchanted island, including an Indigenous tribe led by Tiger Lily.
"It's such a really cool, precious story that has really spanned the times. Neverland is a really magical place ... where anything's possible," said Bailey Frankenberg, who is playing Tiger Lily in the national tour of the newly revised musical version of "Peter Pan."
"There's adventure and there's quote-unquote good versus evil. You're able to be young and strong and overcome things and stand up to the villains — and do it with your friends. I think that there's something really nostalgic about the story that people, no matter how old you are, can relate to."
A New York-based actress who grew up in Oklahoma, Frankenberg, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma who is also Choctaw, will return to her home state as OKC Broadway's 2024-2025 season continues with the new adaptation of Barrie's long-running, high-flying favorite from acclaimed Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse. Performances are March 18-23 at Civic Center Music Hall.
"I'm really proud to be from Oklahoma ... and I'm excited that I get to be Tiger Lily in Oklahoma City," Frankenberg said. "The first national tour I ever saw, I was like, 'I didn't know musicals could be that big,' when I saw 'Beauty and the Beast' in like 2001 ... at the Civic Center. So, it'll be really special to actually be on the stage performing at the place where I was like, 'Oh, I didn't know. I didn't know things like this existed.'"
How is the new national tour of 'Peter Pan' updating the musical for contemporary audiences?
Barrie's signature scamp made his stage debut in London in 1904 with the play "Peter Pan," which made the flying leap to Broadway the following year. The play was such a hit that Barrie was inspired to pen the 1911 novelization "Peter and Wendy."
It also inspired the 1954 Broadway musical "Peter Pan," directed and choreographed by dance and theater icon Jerome Robbins. With a book by Barrie, the 70-year-old show features music by composers Jule Styne, Mark Charlap and Trude Rittmann and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Carolyn Leigh. It includes beloved songs like “I’m Flying,” “I Gotta Crow,” “I Won’t Grow Up” and “Neverland.”
The musical won Mary Martin a Tony Award for playing the title role. Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby earned subsequent Tony nominations for their turns as "the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" in the 1979 and 1990 Broadway revivals, respectively. The new tour turns away from the tradition of women playing Pan, with Texas actor Kruz Maldonado currently soaring in the title role.
"We're doing a new version. ... There's parts of it that are different than the story that we knew before. Instead being in Edwardian England, we're set in the contemporary, ambiguous United States, and I think that's so interesting," Frankenberg told The Oklahoman.
"It's like, 'What makes "Peter Pan" "Peter Pan?"' Is it the British accents and the long nightgowns, or is it the idea of having a place that is eternally preserved and the ability to belong in a place like that, a place that has magic?"
One of the less-than-magical aspects of Neverland is the tribe of “Indians” that Barrie wrote onto his fictional island. The tribe tangles with Hook's roguish pirate band but forms an alliance with Peter and the Lost Boys, sealing their pact by singing the nonsensical, cringe-inducing song "Ugg-a-Wugg." (The cartoonish way Barrie and the musical depicted Tiger Lily and her people was arguably made worse in the 1953 Disney animated film "Peter Pan," which has its own racist musical number with "What Made the Red Man Red?”)
Directed by Emmy Award winner Lonny Price ("Sunset Boulevard"), the new national touring production trims and refreshes Barrie's story with additional book by FastHorse, who is from the Sicangu Lakota Nation in South Dakota. With her wickedly funny satire "The Thanksgiving Play," FastHorse in 2023 became the first Native American woman playwright to have a show produced on Broadway.
"I came on to this project mostly because Larissa was affiliated and they were like, 'We are changing the narrative of how Native people are perceived in "Peter Pan."' My ears perked up when they're like, 'We're gonna start with having Indigenous actors play the Indigenous characters," Frankenberg said.
"Everyone who plays and understudies and covers those roles are all Indigenous to North America. And I thought that was so exciting to have this kind of representation, because I'd never really seen that before, especially with 'Peter Pan.'"
Oklahoma Native American performer calls refreshed 'Peter Pan' role 'empowering'
Although her Oklahoma roots are planted in Purcell, Frankenberg's father, Grant, was a football coach, which means her family frequently moved around the state during her childhood, eventually relocating to Colorado and Texas.
In 2006, she got the chance to be in a high-school production of "Peter Pan," and the performer said she wasn't impressed with the musical's treatment of Tiger Lily.
"Tiger Lily doesn't have a lot of lines, and when she does speak, it's in broken English and third person," she said. "So, Larissa came in, and instead of Tiger Lily being a chief's daughter who's just kind of there, now she is the warrior leader of a tribe of people who are using the magic of Neverland to never grow old, to stay in Neverland, to all preserve their culture. They're all the last of their own people from around the world."
Frankenberg also praised costume designer Sarafina Bush for her research and efforts to make all the Indigenous characters look authentic and to connect them to the actors' own heritage.
"Now, we have the ability to show Native people playing Native people on stage in a really empowering role. It's really exciting to go out the stage door and interact with everyone, and it's really cool to represent my family," Frankenberg said. "It's really exciting to represent my family and my tribe and Native people from across the continent."
When the national tour launched in February 2024, Frankenberg, a trained aerialist, started as a swing performer, as well as the production's flight captain and fight captain. In December, she seized the chance to take over the role of Tiger Lily.
It's a role that no longer includes the dreaded "Ugg-a-Wugg," which has been replaced with the new number "Friends Forever," featuring music from composers Styne, Comden and Green’s short-lived 1961 musical “Subways Are for Sleeping” with new lyrics by Adolph Green’s daughter, Amanda Green. (It's not the first time the problematic song has been dealt with: OKC-based Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate helped overhaul it for NBC's 2014 production of "Peter Pan Live!")
"Having Native people be a part of not just performing, but the creation and the storytelling and how we tell the story moving forward ... I think are great steps," Frankenberg said. "I hope Native people can take away (that) ... 'you belong here. You belong in Neverland, and you belong in all the spaces and stages that are telling these stories.'"
'Peter Pan'
- When: March 18-23.
- Where: Civic Center, 201 N Walker.
- Tickets:https://www.okcbroadway.com/peterpan.