![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/BCN-20261002-PETERPAN-02.jpg\")
The cast of San Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong,\u201d performing through Saturday, November 28, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif. (Jessica Palopoli via Bay City News)<\/p>\nSan Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong\u201d starts at such a high pitch that it\u2019s hard to imagine the comedy could get much funnier as it goes along.\u00a0It kicks off with actor Terrance Austin Smith playing a bumbling, nervous stagehand in the play-within-a-play, stumbling hilariously through an opening night curtain speech.<\/p>\n
But by the end it\u2019s highly likely that audience members are fully laughed out. That\u2019s just how inventive and go-for-broke director Susi Damilano and her topnotch cast are.<\/p>\n
She previously directed \u201cThe Play That Goes Wrong\u201d with the same playwrights: Henry Lewis, Henry Shields and Jonathan Sayer. In a review of that 2024 Playhouse production, I wrote \u201cSusi Damilano knows how to up the comic ante.\u201d This production is even better.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong\u201d draws from by J.M. Barrie\u2019s classic 1904 play and novel about a boy who never grew up.<\/p>\n
And the stakes are higher. There\u2019s not just mayhem but an intense story at the heart of the comic chaos. It\u2019s a play-within-a-play: a production of \u201cPeter Pan\u201d by a community theatre in which the director, the technicians and the scenic designer are practically criminally incompetent.<\/p>\n
The cast of San Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong,\u201d performing through Saturday, November 28, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif. (Jessica Palopoli via Bay City News)<\/p>\n
Peter, a charming and touchingly vulnerable boy who can fly, is played by Ezra Reaves. Peter lives far away with other Lost Boys, and on this occasion, he shepherds the Darling children\u2014Wendy (Maggie Mason), John (Greg Ayers) and Michael (Joe Ayers)\u2014through the night skies to his chosen home. There they encounter the evil Captain Hook (Jomar Tagatac), a shipful of incompetent pirates, the silent and magical Tinkerbell (Renee Rogoff), and . . . well, you know the story.<\/p>\n
Among the fictional community theatre\u2019s faux pas:<\/p>\n
The crew in the light booth gossips maliciously, forgetting to turn off the mic and causing the actors to freeze onstage in horror.<\/p>\n
One cast member never learned his lines at all and is coached by prompts through headphones which occasionally get crossed with radio signal that he faithfully parrots. Another cast member is utterly paralyzed by stage fright. Nana the obedient dog\/housemaid continually gets stuck in the doggie door.<\/p>\n
The increasingly frustrated narrator (Phaedra Tillery-Boughton) is swept on and off stage in a runaway easy chair.<\/p>\n
Peter Pan inevitably makes his first entrance by swooping into the Darling children\u2019s bedroom, accidentally tangled in his flying ropes and upside down.<\/p>\n
Sound cues run amok, set pieces and props fall apart in ways that are seriously dangerous, and timing goes wacko.<\/p>\n
Cody Tellis Rutledge\u2019s varied set design includes a stage that revolves\u2013at times at an almost dizzyingly rapid pace\u2013and a wonderfully fanciful Darling children\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n
High points along the way are a few song and dance numbers and an audience participation moment that really works.<\/p>\n
Plus, the elements of the beloved Peter Pan story\u2014the lost, unloved little boy and his relationship with Wendy\u2014are, amid the hilarity, quite touching.<\/p>\n
Of course, in real life plays do go wrong, although not\u00a0this\u00a0wrong. This play goes wildly right.<\/p>\n
San Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong\u201d continues\u00a0through Nov. 28 at 450\u00a0Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $60 to $145 at\u00a0sfplayhouse.org.<\/a><\/p>\n \n The post Review: San Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u2018Peter Pan Goes Wrong\u2019\u00a0Goes Wildy Right<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco Playhouse\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan Goes Wrong\u201d starts at such a high pitch that it\u2019s hard to imagine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-483551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}