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 delighting new audiences.

Wendy and Peter Pan earned a five-star review from me in 2013 and gains the same again with a largely new cast working under the same director, Jonathan Munby, amid the amazing, magical sets conjured by Colin Richmond. These make full use of technical wizardry, especially in the matter of flying, a major ingredient in any Peter Pan staging.

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 be a lover and a fighter.

Ditto Wendy’s comically grown up brother John (James Corrigan), whose martial ambitions are 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 Hook, with whom he sees no prettier picture than their building a cottage love nest together.

The musing, intellectual side to the villain is 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 father, whose shifting relationship with his suffragette wife (Rebecca Johnson) is another engaging theme to the action.

CHRISTOPHER GRAY 5/5

Until Jan 31, 0844 800 1110