Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure, Royal Festival Hall, London <br></br>Ben Hur, BAC, London

Magic? Not a whiff of it...

'Who put the 'Jolly' in 'Jolly Roger'?" the pirates chorus in Peter Pan, the so-called "musical adventure" that's taken over the 3000-seat Royal Festival Hall for the festive season. "Who took the 'Jolly' out?" would seem a more pertinent question regarding this dismal fiasco which stars the inevitably sour-faced Richard Wilson (from One Foot in the Grave) playing Hook, plus Susannah York as our narrator. Ian Talbot has screwed up badly here, completely losing the assured bounce that was in evidence directing summer capers in Regent's Park. This show is certainly no match for the National Theatre's recent version of JM Barrie's classic. In fact, it's bilge water: more like Peter Down The Pan.

Although the proscenium arch is camouflaged enticingly with rocks and branches, the vast stage looks ugly and bare with plastic flooring and drab, wavy-topped blue screens behind which musicians from the Royal Philharmonic are (understandably) hiding. They churn out anachronistic and unmemorable pop-rock tunes by George Stiles to accompany witless lyrics by Anthony Drewe (the duo formerly acclaimed for Honk!). Meanwhile, we're transported to a Neverland (designed by Will Bowen, a co-founder of the Almeida) that's about as magical as an installation at Gatwick Airport – the cast lug on a few cut-out cardboard mushrooms and palm trees, copied from monochrome Edwardian etchings.

The only thing that inspires wonder is just how rubbish this show can be with so many aboard who should have known better. The sole comforting thought is that proceeds from box office sales – which I'd otherwise call daylight robbery – may help fill the coffers of Great Ormond Street Hospital which treats around 100,000 seriously ill children each year.

Technically speaking, too, this production is far from shipshape. The follow spots seem incapable of finding anyone and the Lost Boys – Peter Pan's people? – offer a ragged disco routine before struggling desperately to slot Wendy's flat-pack hut together. Enduring this, the audience demonstrate comparatively impressive survival skills. By the by, there's no spectacular frigate, just a sail with hoisting difficulties and – though Peter has one aerial moment – there's only a budget flight for Wendy, miming the breaststroke halfway up some steps.

Lottie Mayor is sturdy and maternal enough as Wendy yet she's a sorely dated role model, fussing over household chores. Talbot makes the wilder squaw, Tiger Lily, a cheap sexual joke: a gyrating bimbo who's bound and gagged at any opportunity. As Barrie's death-defying boy-hero, James Gillan is just bland. This Peter, though hysterically proclaiming himself the spirit of youth and freedom, would probably think running a manicure salon was an awfully big adventure. Meanwhile, our tortured Etonian villain is reduced to a panto dandy with no real class courtesy of a besequinned, striped costume designed by Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen (of the BBC's Changing Rooms). Thus demeaned, Wilson hardly bothers to seem menacing or obsessed by Peter. He's merely on automatic pilot, acting crotchety. Only David Bamber is worth catching as his sidekick: an endearingly camp, scarf-knitting Pirate Smee. Susannah York is left aimlessly drifting around, with a weak glazed smile. One suspects the whole company would like the ground to do a crocodile, open wide and swallow them up.

By comparison, Ben-Hur is winning fun, mainly because it's a thumping great epic merrily performed by a star-free cast who don't have two gold coins to rub together, let alone any gilded chariots. This adaptation by Tom Morris and director Carl Heap (co-founder of the wonderful, sadly missed Medieval Players) quite cleverly avoids competing with the lavish Charlton Heston movie. By way of a narrative frame, we find ourselves in the long dining room of a London mansion in 1902 (with spectators ranked on either side). We learn that the master and mistress have swanned off to Drury Lane to see Ben-Hur on stage: a true spectacular that involved eight galloping horses and a whirling sand storm.

While they're away the servants play out their own version of General Lew Wallace's toga saga about a Jewish lad who – though he rescues and is adopted by a rich Roman – vows to beat his imperial oppressors in revenge for other wrongs.

This isn't on a par with the exuberant family shows previously directed at BAC by Phil Willmott. It's not all that Christmassy, even if Ben-Hur's life interconnects with Christ's and he converts near the end. There are speeches that sound, in these internationally tense times, provocatively militaristic. More generally, the dialogue can be ponderous while the acting is underpowered – including Will Adamsdale whose eponymous hero is a rather anodyne boy. Some subplots feel scrappy and Heap can't decide whether to be comical or serious or develop the show into a musical (inserting four songs).

Still, the resourceful inventiveness of our below-stairs troupe is sometimes a delightful hoot. Centurions march about in cricket pads and bodices. The mighty naval battle is played out in miniature, with silver sugar bowls proudly sailing down the dining table, leading fleets of candles. And the chariot race, with stampeding scullery maids and with Ben-Hur and his foe clattering around on chairs, is climactically boisterous. Parlour games gone wild.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Peter Pan': Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, www.rfh.org.uk, (020 7960 4242), to 11 January; 'Ben-Hur': BAC, London SW11, www.bac.org.uk (020 7223 2223), to 18 January