A critical and commercial success for the Royal Shakespeare Company two years ago, Ella Hickson’s brilliant retelling of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is back at Stratford’s main house over Christmas to delight new audiences.

Wendy and Peter Pan earned a five-star review from me in 2013 and gains the same again with a largely different cast working under the same director, Jonathan Munby, amid the amazing, magical sets conjured by Colin Richmond.

These make full use of all the technical wizardry available in the RST, especially in the matter of flying which has to be a major ingredient in any Peter Pan staging.

As the title change suggests, Hickson’s version – tweaked for the revival – places Wendy (Mariah Gale) at the centre of the action, an increasingly feisty female as the play progresses.

The development of her character owes much to her encounters with the princess Tiger Lily (Mimi Ndiweni) who, robbed of her braves by the murderous Captain Hook, is now a lone hunter in search of revenge.

Important, too, is the jealous rivalry with the streetwise Fairy Tink, winningly played again by Oxford School of Drama graduate Charlotte Mills.

Yes, it would seem that Rhys Rusbatch’s strapping, strutting Peter Pan could have the capacity to be a lover as well as a fighter.

Ditto Wendy’s comically grown up brother John (James Corrigan), whose martial ambitions are neatly contrasted with the touchy-feelie attitudes of the younger Darling, Michael (Jordan Metcalfe).

He might have got on rather well, one senses, had they been on the same side of the fight, with Paul Kemp’s Smee, awestruck in admiration for his master Hook, with whom he sees no prettier picture than their building a cottage love nest together.

The musing, intellectual side to the villain is engagingly explored in the performance of Darrell D’Silva who, unlike most Hooks, does not double as the Darlings’ dad.

Instead, Patrick Toomey shows us a bluff, endearing paterfamilias, whose shifting relationship with his suffragette wife (Rebecca Johnson) is another engaging theme to the action.

There is no sighting, you might like to know, of the canine nursemaid Nana, for me the daftest part of the usual story.

5/5

Until January 31
Box office: 0844 800 1110