Wonderland gets stuck down a rabbit hole
Noisy stage soap falls down the rabbit hole
Wonderland was described in the publicity as ‘a medley… of magic and wonder… an exploration of who we are and who we want to be.’ In fact, it was a charmless soap opera mixed with the philosophy of The Wizard Of Oz but with none of its wonder or memorable songs, while hijacking the characters of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.
Forgettable songs were sprayed at earpiercing volume to support its creaky plot and underdeveloped comic characters. It had run out of steam by the end of the first half but laboured on through Act Two – with lots of philosophising about how to live – up to the inevitable booming all-hands-on-deck finish.
The Alice of the story is a 40-year-old separated mother with a daughter, living in a high-rise that looked disturbingly like Grenfell Tower. For no particular reason, she follows the White Rabbit down a lift to Wonderland accompanied by her lovelorn neighbour Jack and daughter Ellie, and meets all the Lewis Carroll characters.
Activity took the place of real humour and fantasy, as everyone ran around trying and failing to be funny. And there in the middle was the Looking Glass. The way to change your life and personality was to walk through it and come out renewed.
The Mad Hatter, portrayed here as a would-be tyrannical megalomaniac, is tamed without much fuss, the uncertain Jack becomes a hip-shakin’ knight, and Alice (a fortissimo-voiced Kerry Ellis) discovers who she is, demonstrating it with navel-gazing elation in I Am My Own Invention and Once More I Can See. Then there’s the duet, This Is Who I Am, with the reformed Hatter, about how wonderful they both are now. Naturally she finds love with Jack and renewed bonding with Ellie, who had become stroppy.
The Queen of Hearts (Wendi Peters, Coronation Street’s Cilla Battersby-Brown) got two short scenes to soar at high volume about cutting off heads, presumably because that’s all anyone remembers the Queen doing.
The richness of the characters barely got a look-in: the Cheshire Cat occasionally walked on his hands while Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee just filled up space.
I would love to know what the young children brought along to see Alice In Wonderland thought of it all.