What do we all require from ALICE? A plunge downward and upward, a play of size and proportion, of sense and nonsense. In short, a full dose of orderly mayhem and chaotic order, the core principles of Wonderland. Septime Webre’s vivacious production, aided by the gorgeous stage designs of James Kronzer and Jeremy W. Foil, and delicious costumes from Liz Vandal, does just that.
The real world which frames the whole is a streamlined palette of washed-out silvers, with Alice alone in blue. Wonderland, like Munchkinland or Oz, is very definitely and defiantly technicolor: we are down the rabbit hole of coloristic saturation. But there are already signs in Alice’s real world of things to come – sights of a volatile mother (mirror image of the Red Queen), playing cards, unexpected visitors, twinhood, tea. This Alice clearly has to process some mother issues, and a need to escape domestic dysfunction for the less real, funnier kind, where the dangers can be dismissed like a pack of cards. I’m ok with this little soupçon of Freud – he was a mere nine when Alice was first published, be it added.
Matthew Pierce’s score starts on the shadowy side with its repetitive motifs. There will be skittishness later on: folksy fiddle for White Rabbit, jazzy saxophone for the Duchess scene (a palsied, pink-wigged Andrew Vecseri of virago volatility, wielding a giant pepper grinder) and so forth. I appreciated the musical eclecticism and most of all Pierce’s energetic use of punctuation (to jolt us with the abruptness of what we are seeing and hearing), and his commitment to letting punctuation obviously slide (glissandos etc), as sense gives way to nonsense in what is surely the central point of the work.
Staging ALICE must represent a candy store of possibilities – more is invariably more in Wonderland, so why not go for an orange-wigged Tweedledum (Kevin Wilson) and Tweedledee (Gavin Lorena) flying in on a bright yellow tandem (a hilariously goofy pairing until the very last bow)? A giant coup de théâtre, where another dancer played Alice’s ‘goodbye’ feet at the end of her billowing skirts? An array of anthropomorphic doors? A fabulously ginormous Jabberwocky held aloft by the corps? Why not all of the above? Indeed, the fleets of male dancers (masked and in white livery) who carry things – or people, or mythical beasts – on stage in this production put me in mind of the fleets of servants in the Victorian real world making middle and upper class magic happen. So I didn’t at all object to the array of men cavorting over the tea-table when not sitting on it in the disciplined line of well-trained butlers. That said, there was no tea. I protest. Lots of antics at the iconic party, and confetti, but no explicit tea reference at this point. Not for the first time in America that tea was thrown overboard.
Occasionally, I felt that there were a few issues of pace. The Flamingos – think 1920s style chorus line – went on a long time, and felt a little imbalanced. There were moments in Act II where I felt a tiny trim would not go amiss. Naomi Tanioka, crisp and refined as Alice conveyed uniform sweetness rather than wackiness, an innocent presence in Wonderland. Small highlight performances for me included Elliott Rogers as Frog (that energy, even in cameo!), Alladson Barreto as Cheshire Cat (that nocturnal pas de deux, an excellent idea), and Paul Zusi (a dancer who came to my notice last year as Peter Pan) who commanded the floor as Dodo Bird. The hyper-flexible Whitney Huell was an impeccable choice for the hookah-smoking Caterpillar and Kelsey Ivana Hellebuych for the dominatrix-style Red Queen (those violent angles of arms and legs!). Webre has always known how to fill a stage, he is anything but a minimalist, and there’s charm in his inclusion of little ballerina parts – furry baby flamingos, piglets, cartwheeling cards. No Wonderland should ever be without children.
The trial scene was a masterpiece of staging and choreography, just what it should be, a fantasy of medieval court pageantry, with playing cards rolled down as heraldic banners, and a raised dais for the Queen and her hen-pecked other-half. A triumphant riot of color, sound and movement before we return to the silvery un-chromatic world of Victorian girlhood: Alice safely back in her wing-chair with a book. Only lacking the antimacassar.
