Alice - Theatre in the Quarter
I had mixed feelings leading up to this production. Alice in Wonderland is in my top five all-time favourite stories. So I'm biased. Both for and against a staging of it. I will love it because I love the story and I will hate it because it's not the book and never can be. So there's a conundrum before it starts. But then Stephanie Dale, Alice's writer, throws in a whole lot more to the problem. Because this isn't a production of Alice in Wonderland. This is a production about the telling of the story of Alice in Wonderland. Which is pretty brilliant actually (thus in bold AND italics).
The play opens with Lewis Carroll (Duncan MacInnes) writing a letter to a now-married Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell. Before he can finish and send it, however, a boy arrives and Carroll begins to tell the story of creating Wonderland for Alice (Anne O’Riordan); this involves him becoming the White Rabbit (an important doubling) and leading her to the world we are more familiar with. Once we drop down, we meet the characters we are used to - the Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter - plus a couple not always brought in - the Duchess and the Cook, for example.
So far, fairly standard fare for plot expectations. This is where Dale takes us off the beaten path. We crack through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the first Act and then start on Through the Looking Glass for the second. The benefit of this is that themes come through so much more strongly for the change. Carroll's dependency on, and enjoyment of, the stories he tells overshadow Alice's participation by far and the characters begin to link, not only to Alice, but to Lewis himself. The need to tell stories and create worlds begins to show in Act II as cracks appear and everything feels a bit more grown-up than it did in Act I.
The staging, in the round, is fairly open - all the props and costumes are laid bare around the edges of the building - and it is a credit to Peter Leslie Wild's direction that you don't find anybody with their eyes wandering off the stage. The set itself (Dawn Allsopp) was brilliant, all the set pieces mirroring the actors in doubling as several items (eg chairs into ladders) and Stuart Harrison's lighting does a great job of highlighting all these. And composer Matt Baker's music does a great job throughout but is often at its best when the song comes out of the scene rather than as an aid for the transitions.
The production doesn't always hit it for me. The transitions can be confusing or feel a bit forced - the imposing of *this is Lewis telling a story* gets in the way of the appealingly bonkers logic of the story at times. I can also imagine that it's a bit grown-up at times, lacking in real out-and-out craziness, the Hatter's tea party hitting me as tame. For one, every switching of places was identical and the actors seemed to be playing to the same rhythm rather than just used to the routine. I also never felt threatened (which seems like an odd complaint) but I rarely see something where I am so close to the actors and feel so safe. There was just so much going on that I didn't think the actors would find time to engage with me, pick on me, reference me etc. Not all plays have this, of course, but a play in the round, set mainly on floor level (or thereabout), about creating worlds and leading people through stories?
I've left the actors until last through choice rather than convention. Mainly because they are the strength of this production. Of course they've got there through brilliant writing, inventive staging and direction, great music etc but still, they're top. Ann O'Riordan and Duncan MacInnes are essentially the straight characters in the play but holding together a fairly complex concept is no mean feat and they do it superbly, particularly the developments from beginning to end of the play. Quickly becoming TITQ stalwarts, Ben Tolley and David Edwards have raised their game again this year, Tolley's Duchess and Edward's White Knight the respective highlights for me. However, my standouts have to be Sophia Hatfield and Andrew Roberts-Palmer. They don't disappoint as some of the biggest characters in the story - The Queen of Hearts, the Dormouse; the Caterpillar, the Cook, Humpty Dumpty - and their ability to wildly differentiate characters, at speed, is excellent.
Generally speaking, in a actor-musician, multiroling play like this you need to have a tight knit group and Theatre in the Quarter has done very well to assemble one. The play isn't your average telling of a well-known story. It's inventive, witty and will only get better from here on.
And if at Christmas, you like to see a play with a message, I think there are several here. That nobody stays the same. That we're never too old for stories. But I think the main one is that we just need to accept everyone, including ourselves, as they are.
Oh and there are puns. There are so many puns. It's great.
