The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up: Sexuality, Irresponsibility, and Political Economics in Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef’s Peter Panties

Abstract

Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef’s play Peter Panties (2011)
adapts J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (both the 1904 play and the 1911
novel), but unlike Barrie’s almost asexual Peter, McNeil and
Youssef create a sexually obsessive, if immature, version of the
boy who refuses to grow up. Both Peters are narcissistic and
capriciously demand that his/their own needs and desires be met
while shirking any responsibility to others—exemplifying what
psychoanalyst Dan Kiley termed Peter Pan Syndrome. McNeil
and Youssef shift from Barrie’s Edwardian industrial capitalist
context to a twenty-first century neoliberal capitalist context, and
this shift is deeply tied to Peter’s distinct psychology in Peter
Panties. This adaptation critiques late capitalism’s culture of
enjoyment and the negative consequences, both social and
psychological, that come with the inability to renounce or delay
gratification of desire in an economy dependent on continual
consumption.