ATLRetro

From the moment she descends from the rafters in her pink tutu, her face perpetually peevish, it’s clear Emily Yetter is not your Uncle Walt’s Tinkerbell. No blonde beehive, sexy green mini-dress, ethereal flitting or delicate shoes—stomp, stomp. She’ll fly you into Neverland, but you’d better watch your back or she’ll have the lost boys shooting you down with an arrow. She don’t need no stinkin’ mother. Just ask Wendy.

A quirky-jerky politically incorrect anti-heroine is just what Tinkerbell should be, since the multimedia production currently playing under the big tent in Pemberton Place is J.M. BARRIE’S PETER PAN—an adaptation of the original play, not Disney’s nor Broadway’s reboot starring adult actresses sporting Robin Hood hats. British Three Sixty Entertainment has trumpeted the use of the world’s first theatre-in-the-round CGI projection screens that thrust the audience into flight alongside the boy who wouldn’t grow up. But while the special effects are awesome, what makes the staging so wonderful is the return to the original story and the way the cast embraces its whimsy wholeheartedly.

Emily Yetter as Tinkerbell. Photo credit: Ed Krieger.

The critically acclaimed production debuted in 2009 in London’s Kensington Gardens, the neighborhood where Barrie set the story, but Yetter joined the cast for its stateside debut in San Francisco last spring. An ingénue whose previous theatre experience has been in university and local productions, she’s been winning accolades from reviewers for her passion at petulance and talent at tantrums. ATLRetro caught up with her recently and coaxed her to share a few secrets about her magical experience getting locked in nursery chests, cavorting with lost boys, foiling a certain hook-handed pirate, and—of course—flying.

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