ALICE IN WONDERLAND. To 4 February.
Leeds
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
by John Wells after Lewis Carroll music by Carl Davis
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Quarry Theatre) To 4 February 2006
Tue-Sat 7pm no evening performance 31 Dec Mat 27-31 Dec; 5-8; 12, 14, 19, 21, 26-29 Jan, 2-4 Feb 1.30pm (matinees only on Sundays)
Audio-described 5 Jan 7pm, 21 Jan 1.30pm
BSL Signed 14 Jan 1.30pm
Captioned 27 Jan, 28 Jan 1.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 December
A musical Alice that’s as good a Carroll adaptation as any, and as grand a Christmas show as any in the land.
“In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming…” says a Lewis Carroll poem about his Alice, quoted in the West Yorkshire Playhouse programme. And the whole experience of Ian Brown’s magnificent Leeds production is like dreaming with Alice down that rabbit-hole in a world where logic creates its own virtual reality.
Does it all happen in just two and a quarter hours, ice-cream time included? Time should go more quickly when you’re enjoying yourself in Alice’s company, among creatures whose reasoning brooks no argument, a dreamland pushed aside when it threatens too much, falling like the pack of cards these high-handed Wonderland beings are.
Brown, astute as can be with script details, is showing in his Quarry Theatre Christmas shows that he’s also a magnificent creator of the grand theatrical manner. Willows, Narnia and now Wonderland make a track-record on which a generation of fortunate young Leeds theatregoers could be building a childhood’s vision of the Christmas season.
John Wells had just the mind for Carroll’s bright quirkiness while Carl Davis makes pastiche an art (it’s impossible to imagine Abel Gance’s great silent film Napoleon without Davis’s supple, heroic score). If his style here, referring to comic opera and musical comedy (there’s one gloriously operatic performance, making a grand comic mark at first utterance), inevitably recalls the rhythmic tunefulness of Gilbert & Sullivan that’s apt. The law led Gilbert to the same logical fantasy as mathematics led Charles Dodgson in his alias as Carroll.
Ruari Murchison’s designs (including Cheshire Cat grins through curtains and projections) do wonderful work creating Wonderland, set-panels shifting out and in to create the sense of Alice’s sudden shifts in height then moving with a flexibility that’s needed to keep an essentially episodic story together as a stage narrative.
Early scenes are virtual soliloquies for Annelene Beechey’s Alice. Looking a near-perfect Victorian girl, Beechey handles them perfectly. Her Alice is sympathetic and resourceful, and remains distinguished by her troubled reactions in a world where everyone else is certain what’s what. The ever-excellent Timothy Kightley is also particularly fine in the unimpeachable cast. This is a hugely enjoyable experience.
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Alice: Annalene Beechey
Jane/Mouse/Squirrel/Cheshire Cat: Alice Redmond
White Rabbit: David Beckford
Dinah/Crab: Sarah Earnshaw
Lory/Duchess: Julie Jupp
Duck: Ben Stock
Dodo/King of Hearts: Timothy Kightley
Eaglet/Pigeon/Doormouse: Mark McGee
Canary/Cook/Mock Turtle: Alastair Parker
Magpie/Mad Hatter/Card Gardener: Tony Timberlake
Pat the Hedgehog/March Hare/Card Gardener: Edward Gower
Bill the Lizard/Fish Footman/Card Gardener: Ahmet Ahmet
Caterpillar/Executioner: Mark Oxtoby
Frog Footman/Gryphon: Adam Pearce
Knave of Hearts: Nathan Taylor
Queen of Hearts: Jill Pert
Director: Ian Brown
Designer: Ruari Murchison
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound/Audio-Visual: Mic Pool
Musical director: Jonathan Gill
Choreographer/Movement: Sam spencer-Lane
Assistant direcstor: Alan Lane
Assistant musical director: Laura Bangay
Costume: Ruari Murchison, Stephen Snell
2005-12-26 11:54:39