Chance to learn more about Peter Pan man

MYSTERY and scandal has long dogged the ghost of JM Barrie, creator of Peter Pan.

There’s a chance to learn a little more about him at the Pleasance Theatre next week, when a trilogy of one-act plays tours to the Capital. The first, commissioned by Theatre Broad, is M’Connachie and JMB, by award-winning Edinburgh playwright Anne Stenhouse, in which ‘life’ is given to M’Connachie, Barrie’s alter-ego, or as he put it, “the name I give the unruly half of myself”.

The new piece is followed by two of ‘his finest one-act plays.’ While M’Connachie And JMB, starring Alan McLaren as M’Connachie and Robert Howat as JM Barrie (pictured), gives insight into the enigma surrounding the Son of Kirriemuir, Seven Women, a revised version of his earlier play The Legend of Lenore, is a light-hearted and inventive love story. The final piece, The Twelve Pound Look, is a feminist work addressing women’s financial independence, at a time when most ‘feminist’ plays lampooned the suffragette movement.

JM Barrie: Peter Pan Man, The Pleasance, Tuesday, 7.30pm, £10, www.eusalive.co.uk, then Howden Park Centre, Livingston, June 5, £10, www.howdenparkcentre.co.uk