PETER PAN has become such a staple of the Christmas pantomime season that it’s easy to forget what an ambitious undertaking it was when the curtains first went up at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, in December 1904. Lavish sets, machinery enabling characters to fly though the air and a cast of 50 made it unusually expensive for a children’s play. Fortunately, American theatre magnate Charles Frohman responded enthusiastically to J. M. Barrie’s idea and financed the production.
Fashionable artist of the day William Nicholson was given a free rein as the designer (he