Happy thoughts as Peter Pan to retire

LOS ANGELES — He's the boy who won't grow up — but the actress who has played Peter Pan for 30 years says she finally has.

Cathy Rigby was barely out of her teens the first time she strapped on a sword and flew off a stage to do battle with the evil Capt. Hook in James M. Barrie's enduring children's classic, "Peter Pan."

She's 51 now, her four children are grown and she recently became a grandmother for the second time. Although the youthful Rigby is still able to soar across a stage, she has decided the time is right to hang up her sword, say goodbye to the Lost Boys and leave Neverland behind.

Not that the ending will come quickly.

The last tour of "Cathy Rigby Is Peter Pan" began in Southern California, stops at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre tonight through Dec. 19 and will arrive on Broadway in time for the Christmas 2005 season.

Nor will the ending come easily for Rigby, who just about grew up in the role.

"In a way, I think it will be like putting away your childhood," she says, relaxing on the patio of her suburban Southern California home just after the tour began, her pet cockatoo at her side.

Except for some age lines around her eyes, 4-foot-11-inch Rigby has changed little from when she first began playing Peter Pan in 1974, or for that matter from when she took part in her first Olympics, in Mexico City, at age 15.

Her hair is still blond and cropped, and she is as trim and muscular as she was as a gymnast. She credits her fitness in part to a personal trainer who helped her get in top shape for her latest incarnation of Peter Pan, a role she says she will miss.

"I've been able to play a kid up to this point and pretend that I'm not a grown-up — well, at least for two hours a night!" Rigby says.

"Yeah, I think it's going to be a little difficult, because every so often I've had this chance to relive a childhood that I really didn't have before," she adds.

Not that her childhood was unhappy. It was just different from most, filled with morning-to-night gymnastics workouts from age 10 until she retired from the sport at 19. By then she had become a two-time Olympian and the first U.S. gymnast to win a medal in international competition. She captured the silver on balance beam at the 1970 World Championships.

Most likely the producers of a showy, theater-in-the-round version of "Peter Pan" were trying to capitalize on her fame and skill when they offered her the role in 1974. The painfully shy gymnast was scared to death.

"I remember secretly going off and crying," she says of her first day of rehearsals. "All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?' "

Only 20 and just a year into "retirement," she had no idea what she would be doing with the rest of her life when the role came along. To her surprise, she discovered she could not only pull off playing Peter Pan but that she actually enjoyed doing it.

Others also were impressed and suggested she take acting and voice lessons. She did. And several years later, she landed the role of Dorothy in a production of "The Wizard of Oz." Since then she has appeared in national tours of "Meet Me in St. Louis," "Paint Your Wagon" and other shows, and starred on Broadway as the Cat in the Hat in "Seussical The Musical."

But "Pan," for which she received a Tony nomination in 1991 for a Broadway version of the show, remains her signature role. She estimates she has donned the eternal 10-year-old's tights and — with the help of fairy dust, the thinking of happy thoughts and a complicated harness — flown to Neverland at least 2,500 times.

During her early years as Peter Pan, critics hailed her athletic abilities but some would take her to task for her singing. Rigby believes years of practice finally silenced them on that point.

Perhaps her toughest critic was Betty Comden, who wrote the lyrics to the show's songs when "Peter Pan" debuted on Broadway in the 1950s. Comden has watched every prominent performer who ever played the role, from the legendary Mary Martin, who won a Tony in the original Broadway show, and later Sandy Duncan.

"Mary had a wonderful singing voice, but Cathy does it very well, too," Comden said. "I've grown to love Cathy in the role. She captures the spirit of what Peter Pan is all about; the imagination involved in it. And she's also a wonderful physical performer. I tried flying in one of those harnesses, you know, and it's not easy."

Rigby acknowledges that at 51 (she'll be 52 on Dec. 12) it is getting harder to fly. The sword fights with Capt. Hook can also take their toll, including one that resulted in a stab wound in the leg on opening night. But she also thinks she's in the best shape of her life and says that age isn't the real reason she's quitting the role. She says she's ready for new challenges.

"I'm waiting for that writer to write a family show for me. I'd love to do something original. I don't know what it is but I'd love to do it," she says. "If not, I will do other shows that I have always done. But first I'll come home and just play in my garden and tend to my animals and my husband."