Peter and Alice, review - Telegraph One can understand why John Logan broke off from writing more James Bond films after Skyfall to concentrate on Peter and Alice. Big, action-packed blockbusters afford little, if any, scope for communicating very much about the human condition. His dramatisation of what followed from Alice Liddell Hargreaves's real-life encounter with Peter Llewelyn Davies in a bookshop - she was Lewis Carroll's inspiration for Alice, he was J M Barrie's for Peter Pan - is about growing older, love, loss, joy, sorrow and how we are all shaped by our childhoods. It is an odd, unwieldly piece with its raw edges and unresolved themes, but it is necessarily so because it is about life - and that, of course, is how life is. Dame Judi Dench, in her mink and her big hat, is wonderfully cast as Alice: the actress may be nudging 80, but she retains a childlike look of wonder in her beautiful old face. She achieves an edgy chemistry with Ben Whishaw's bookish and rather anxious Peter at their first meeting, when they realise how their lives have both been shaped by two famous writers. The musty, old-fashioned bookshop with its stained skylights is a claustrophobic place thanks to Christopher Oram's superb design. When the two protagonists recall the past and the fantastical worlds their fictional alter egos inhabited there is a sense of liberation as Oram turns the stage into what looks like a gigantic old-fashioned pop-up book. The past and the present become inexorably blurred as Peter recalls how his father, Arthur, stricken with cancer, entrusted him and his brothers into Barrie's care after he had befriended them during their walks in Kensington Gardens. The scene is heart-rendingly played by Stefano Braschi as the wheelchair-bound patriarch and Derek Riddell as Barrie. Poor Braschi, after his role in The Guinea Pig Club, seems destined always to play individuals who are hideously scarred by life. There is a dark side to Barrie which Riddell communicates well: it makes Arthur's concerns about whether he will behave appropriately towards his boys seem understandable. The man seems too good to be true. Were you interfered with? Alice asks Peter. "Molested, you mean?" he replies. No, nothing like that... not physically anyway. The emphasis is on the word "physically" because the intense relationship they had with the writers they inspired is a profoundly complicated one which Alice managed to handle a lot better than Peter did (he ended up committing suicide). Barrie's life has been subjected to a great deal of dramatic licence in recent years - one thinks of the Johnny Depp film Finding Neverland - but this piece is the most thought-provoking. Whishaw knows the lines that matter in a play and he delivers the key one with a haunting wistfulness. When I look at my own children, Mrs Hargreaves, I think... I think I know what childhood's for. It's to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering. So when sadness comes, at least you can remember what it was to be happy. Less is sometimes so much more when it comes to directing and Michael Grandage recognises it is the words that make this piece come alive. He more or less leaves his two principals to it: so many of their lines, delivered with such sensitivity, now remain indelibly etched in my head. This is bold, original, daring theatre that is unquestionably touched by greatness. Until June 1. Tickets 0844 482 5141; MichaelGrandageCompany.com Follow Seven on Twitter @TelegraphSeven