‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’ review: Neverland nincompoops get laughs

I do believe in f – – kups! I do! I do! 

And that’s what “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” the happily hyperactive comedy that opened Wednesday night on Broadway, provides: missteps, mayhem, incapacitations, faulty sets and, in a roundabout way, “Fawlty Towers.”

The very funny British play’s premise is the season’s simplest. The amateur Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society tries to put on “Peter and Wendy” and fails epically. 

But the execution of the disasters is almost balletic … well, if in “Swan Lake” the sets collapsed and unhinged children booed the dancers.

Chris (Henry Shields), the play-within-a-play’s director and its Captain Hook, is the spitting image of John Cleese as the famous Britcom “Fawlty Towers”’ Basil, the beleaguered hotel owner. And like Basil, he exaggeratedly tries to keep everything together and bungles it every time. 

He has to contend with shouting Dennis (Jonathan Sayer), who has his lines fed to him through headphones as he plays Michael Darling but keeps reciting radio commercials instead. And there’s Robert (Henry Lewis), who takes on the part of Nana the dog and gets stuck in the doggy door. 

Good thing Neil Patrick Harris as the narrator is on-hand with a chainsaw to help cut him out. If only he could make his entrances and exits properly.

Poor Robert also has PTSD from a fatal production of “Oliver!”, and Sandra (Charlie Russell) acts like she’s a hippie dancing in a field as Wendy. The quick change Annie (Nancy Zamit) makes from Mrs. Darling to the maid is an actor’s risqué nightmare.  

There are hookups, betrayals, power outages, inappropriate sound cues and near-death experiences. And a mid-show replacement for Peter Pan is required. The performance goes so off-the-rails that in this Neverland the kids cheer for the should-be menacing crocodile (a beaming Matthew Cavendish).

The audience is pummeled with slapstick in director Adam Meggido’s production, and the antics never let up. Not that anybody comes to a “Goes Wrong” show in search of serenity and introspection. Mischief Theatre’s similarly ill-fated “Play That Goes Wrong” was a hit on Broadway in 2019 featuring many of these strong comedic actors.

At two hours and five minutes over two acts, the effect of the wackiness wears off a tad toward the end — even though the final chase scene is brilliantly choreographed on Simon Scullion’s set of a million secrets.

And some adults in the audience (not this one) might turn up their noses at Shields’ pantomime-like insistence that kids boo Captain Hook. And they boo a lot. A few theatergoers looked aghast, like some drunks had just thrown their bras at King Lear. To them I’ll give the opposite advice that Peter Pan would: Grow up! Shields’ self-debasement is delightful.

That’s really all this lovable cast wants anyway — for us to get rowdy for them to be ridiculed.