Every age has its issues. One of those issues is AGING.
Slow Dance in Cut Time begins with a journey, a death, and a careless comment which converge like streams spilling into a river. The characters of assorted ages and stages of life, clinging to flotsam or fighting against the flow, are all born along by the currents, out of control, tossed in the eddies, washed downstream.
References to Peter Pan — Anna’s physical size and manner of standing, the play of shadows, the talk of flying, the ticking clock reminding us of the approaching Croc, the bedroom window in Quentin’s house in Kent and Anna’s bare-legged silhouette, etc. — run throughout the play as symbols of the fight many of us wage against age. But the ceaselessly flowing river is also present, drowning us all, eventually.
While Peter Pan may choose not to grow up, nor to grow old, the rest of us have no choice. Short of an early death, we all grow old. Growing up — that’s another matter. We may choose to ignore or excise the sag, fat, and fold. We may shrug off the weighty residue of experience and memory. Still we grow old. That said, mightn’t it be best to grow up as well?