Peter Pan Character Descriptions

If you are planning on auditioning for one of the following characters, you must be prepared to sing with the piano (Peter, Wendy, Michael, John, Hook, Mr./Mrs. Darling).  Characters have suggested audition songs with downloadable sheet music and links to listen to each listed song.  If you would prefer to prepare a song other than the song listed, that is OK as long as you have the sheet music for the pianist to accompany you with.  Please see additional audition notes below.

A magical, arrogant boy who will never grow up. Many parents look at their children and wish, along with Mrs. Darling: “Oh, why can’t you remain like this forever!” And many children look at their parents with anxious appraisal and wish for the same thing. Peter Pan is the wish come true. Like all abstractions, he is in equal parts wonderful and terrifying. His immortality and wildness carry him to the dazzling limits of experience, but they take him away from its center, a safe, warm, and secluded place like the nursery. Peter has no fears, so he feels no desire for safety, and he has no memory, so he doesn’t understand change or loss. And there is something else he does not have, though it is an emptiness that is more difficult to name. For convenience, J. M. Barrie calls it ‘heartlessness’, because without it there can’t be anything like love. Vocal Range: Alto/Tenor

Audition Suggestion:
Distant Melody
Download/Listen
I Gotta Crow
Download/Listen

The eldest Darling child, a “tidy,” practical girl with a soft spot in her heart for orphaned or abandoned creatures. From an early age, Wendy seems naturally disposed to care for others. When the lost boys tell her that they need “a nice motherly person,” Wendy replies happily, “I feel that is exactly what I am”: she is clearly delighted to complete this symmetry, to be no more and no less. But we also catch glimpses of a very different Wendy, hiding awkwardly behind the “motherly person.” This other Wendy tries over and over for the ‘kiss’ in the corner of Mrs. Darling’s mouth, the kiss she “could never get,” though Peter takes it without trying. She wants to fly and play with mermaids and say “funny things to the stars.” And when she has grown into the mother she was always becoming, the other Wendy wants desperately for the “woman” whom she now lives inside to “let go” of her. Perhaps that desire will one day turn into a hopeless, mysterious ‘kiss’ of her own, forbidden to her own daughter as her mother’s was forbidden to her. Vocal Range: Soprano/Alto

Audition Suggestion:
Distant Melody
Download/Listen
Tender Shepard
Download/Listen

The pirates’ fearsome leader. When we first meet Hook, he is a classic storybook villain: evil, hairy, and merciless, cruel even to his own crew. He despises Peter and the other children, and dreams of killing them all. Yet from the very beginning we are made to understand that Hook is not quite an ordinary pirate. His greatest viciousness is expressed via politeness, his eyes are an intelligent, “melancholy” blue, and on close examination he looks like a distant member of the British royal family. Before Hook was a pirate, he belonged to a well-known family and attended a prestigious high school. His love for piracy and senseless violence is tempered by a nostalgia for simple ordinary propriety, for a sense of belonging in conventional society. Like the Darling children and the lost boys, he secretly longs to return to the real world, dreary as it may be.  Vocal Range: Baritone

Audition Suggestion:
Captain Hook's Waltz
Download/Listen

The children’s mother, and the narrator’s favorite, Mrs. Darling is a lovely, cheerful woman with a mysterious “kiss” in the corner of her mouth, like some leftover childhood magic. She adores her children and loves to care for them, and pines away when they leave her. To see them come home again is her greatest happiness. Vocal Range: Alto/Soprano

Audition Suggestion:
Tender Shepard
Download/Listen

A fussy, responsible family man. In the beginning of the story, Mr. Darling is always very practical, concerned primarily with money and keeping up appearances. Though he is sometimes childish and insecure, he demands respect from his wife and children, and usually they happily oblige him. But sometimes, when his feelings are hurt, he loses his temper and acts unfairly. He changes quite a lot after the children fly away: his guilt makes him re-examine his behavior and values, and he becomes more cheerful, easy-going, and sentimental, even “quixotic.” Missing his children brings him back to his own childhood.

Audition Suggestion:
Captain Hook's Waltz
Download/Listen

The middle Darling child. John tends to be cautious and conservative, a little ill-tempered, and sometimes cowardly. Wendy tells us that he “despises” girls, and he somewhat resents Peter for his kingly manner. In some ways, he greatly resembles Mr. Darling – he is precocious in the pettier aspects of manhood.  Vocal Range: Tenor

Audition Suggestion:
I Won't Grow Up
Download/Listen

The youngest Darling child, dreamy, sweet, sleepy, and forgetful. He takes to the magic of Neverland more easily than John, because he hasn’t been shaped as much by ordinary adult society. He adores his mother but quickly forgets her.  Vocal Range: Tenor

Audition Suggestion:
I Won't Grow Up
Download/Listen

A tiny fairy companion to Peter Pan, a beautiful girl with a voice like a bell and a very sharp tongue. She fixes kitchenware and loves Peter jealously and intensely. She despises any girl that lays claim on Peter’s affections, especially Wendy, and can be quite violent. She loves Peter so much that she almost dies to save his life.

Peter's friends and playmates.  They, like Peter, are young and energetic.  They are the kids you see playing in parks and schoolyards - who can create any world imaginable on a moment's notice.  They are innocence, wonder and adventurous.  Vocal Range: All

These folks (both guys and girls) represent the "adults" of the world who are out to take away the Lost Boys' youth - they want to "steal" their fun and make them grown-ups (in a way).  We're playing them as bumbling fools - cuz everyone knows grown-ups are just idiots who can't do anything right!  They are to be laughed at.  But, man are these Pirates fun to play.  Vocal Range: All.

What the script calls "Indians," we are calling Warriors.  When Barrie wrote the story in 1902, he wanted a group that was "wild" and so he used the stereotype of Indians.  But we won't use that.  Our Warriors also represent the wild side, but our tribe will be global, each with hint elements of various countries - like China, Kenya, Sweden, Russia, Brazil, etc.  They will communicate mostly through dance.  Vocal Range: All.