Benjamin Starling

[AlexanderDavid]

Tentatively putting this here instead of in the Peter Pan or J. M. Barrie forums (you'll see why, and I hope I'm not mistaken), but does anyone know anything about this?

Apparently it's a musical that serves as a "sort-of" sequel to The Little White Bird, featuring a grown-up David and his children, Jamie and Tommy.

I say "sort-of" because while David and his children do tell stories about a character who is not quite a bird and not quite a human child, he is NOT called "Peter Pan."  Rather, as the title suggests, he is called "Benjamin Starling."

I find the change of name interesting--even though it's inaccurate, it seems to address the inconsistencies with the Peter Pan of the play and the book Peter and Wendy by having him be a separate character entirely with a different name, in addition to not exploiting the popularity of Peter Pan (or the latter tale) but letting the story stand on its own as a sort of alternate history continuation of the boy David in The Little White Bird.  In other words, Benjamin Starling's place in the tale is similar to that of Peter Pan in the novel--a "story within a story."

(EDIT: It just occurred to me that there's also a possibility--though I don't like to pre-judge without facts--that it's to avoid copyright infringement, a la Nosferatu as an adaptation of Dracula....  I don't know for sure, and I want to give the benefit of the doubt, but if that IS the case, maybe not as big an improvement as I thought....)

I hope I wasn't wrong posting this here--it's not technically Peter Pan since the character is renamed and isn't the primary focus of the musical, and the musical itself wasn't written by Barrie, nor is it simply an adaptation of The Little White Bird (I would certainly have put this in the J. M. Barrie part of the forums if it were)....

Anyway, I haven't seen this musical myself, and I wondered if anyone here had heard of it.