Spectacular . . . sensational . . . extraordinary . . . played to a million people in Spain . . . The boasts on the Garrick façade are so over the top that you expect this Peter Pan to be far more of El Musical than what it turns out to be: a heavily cut version of Barrie with decor that looks as if it has been substituted at the last moment for sets still with the baggage handlers at Terminal 5.

El Musical opens with a display of laser beams that prepare you for a high-tech Tinkerbell yet proceeds to deny you not only that but also the flying that generations of spectators have taken for granted. Isabel Malavia’s Wendy and her brothers hover momentarily over the ground and that’s that, since the scene where they fly home to find Daddy Darling in the dog kennel has pretty much disappeared. That took me back to the worst Peter Pan of recent years, a Festival Hall revival in which there was no flying at all until the boy-hero fluttered down for his curtain call.

The great Richard Wilson played Captain Hook in that production, but it wasn’t his finest hour, since mostly I recall him struggling to stop his long, mauve, meringue-like wig falling off. But rather his cantankerous Cavalier than Miguel Ángel Gamero's Garfio, or Hook, who is neither threatening nor funny. Why, he sounds like a sympathetic Swiss euthanasia expert as he apologetically inserts poison into Pan’s cup, singing that death will be over in a moment: “No mourning or delirium, I’m going with the high tide – adios, Peter.”

The surtitles aren’t kind to the lyrics, which earlier have Hook imploring the absent Pan to “give me permission to make you sleep for all eternity” and the Darlings singing that “our family title is noble and commendable”. César ConstantÍ’s music is a lot brighter. Other pluses include some lively dancing by mermaids who then stand on their heads waving their tails, Indians chanting “hinha hula, Peter Pan” and pirates who appear to have enrolled a couple of sumo wrestlers – and the acting of Miguel Antelo, a Peter who exudes breezy, callow charm as he spins round the stage.

But Cristina Fargas, who both adapted and directed, has made choices that don’t increase the tension and excitement the show crucially lacks. Why turn herself into a Mrs Darling who, when she should be mourning her lost children, comfily wanders the stage narrating bits of story and offering gratuitous salutes to childhood, innocence and the imagination? Why does Pedro Espadas’s Smee bring a couple of audience members on stage, only to tell them they have big eyes and mouths? That left me as baffled as I was by my own behaviour when Antelo’s Peter asked us to stand and sing in Spanish that we believed in fairies. I did just that – and felt like a prat, since I didn’t even believe in the show’s human beings.

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