‘For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday’ Takes One Last Trip to Neverland

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At the end of the script in Sarah Ruhl’s “For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday,” photographs suddenly appear: a young woman in a Peter Pan costume; that same woman on a yellowed poster for an Iowa children’s theater production of “Peter Pan”; a shot of her beaming beside Mary Martin, who played the same role. The young woman is Ms. Ruhl’s mother, Kathleen Kehoe Ruhl, for whom she wrote “For Peter Pan.”

Starring Kathleen Chalfant as a 70-year-old woman who has never stopped believing in theatrical magic, the play begins previews Friday, Aug. 18, at Playwrights Horizons. Directed by Les Waters — who staged Ms. Ruhl’s “In the Next Room, or the vibrator play” and her heart-piercing “Eurydice” — “For Peter Pan” is about five adult siblings confronting mortality and making one last trip to Neverland, even if flying is harder than it used to be. (playwrightshorizons.org)

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