It does make you wonder
ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND Hamley Productions Theatre Royal Backspace Until June 9
PRESENTED as an exploration of the inner world of the famous children’s author Lewis Carroll, Christopher Hampton’s 1994 play has long been recognised as “tricky”.
Despite some detailed and committed direction by experienced director Andrew Casey for local Hamley Productions, for this reviewer the play remains problematic.
Hamley Productions have certainly assembled a fine cast. Madeline Jeffrey-Moore is a model of warmth and professional concentration in the passive but challenging role of seven-year-old Alice, a fine counterpoint to Chris Hamley’s Carroll.
Alice aficionados will particularly enjoy the impressive chorus. Aleksandra Crossan’s formidable technical skills bring to life a string of Carroll’s most famous characters. Vocally and physically the change-ups are wonderful. She is joined by Ivano Del Pio and Kate Choraziak, giving solid performances and well costumed by the consistently excellent Ros Wren.
My unease, though, remains with Hampton’s script. I’m not sure it knows what it is. It’s not quite biography. It simply re-presents rather than re-imagines Carroll’s most famous creations.
And it doesn’t seem, to me, a successful exploration of those creations, in the context of a repressed Victorian social code.
Most curious, though, is a jarring mid-play reference to Carroll’s fetish for photographing young girls in various states of undress. That raised a number of moral issues that the playwright should have more carefully explored.
But like the White Rabbit, this is a script that seemed determined to rush from one “very important date” to the next.