LEWIS Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is one of the greatest works of English literature – beautifully, poetically written, full of vivid and unconventional characters, jam-packed with imaginative touches and extraordinary events, somewhere between a rainbow dream and a fever-nightmare, and memorably illustrated, so that we all know what the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat or the Mad Hatter look like.
Panto writer Ben Crocker has taken the bones of both Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and moved the story on for an indeterminate period – playing with time, one of the themes of Wonderland.
And a giant clock dominates the arts centre stage in Shaftesbury’s colourful, energetic production of this pantomime version of the story.
The Wrong Red Queen (Samantha Bailey) has her eyes on Wonderland, and she knows that the way to turn this happy place into a dark and dismal desert is to stop the clock. The Jabberwocky holds the key, in his castle on the mountain beyond the deep forest.
The bad queen’s henchmen, the Wrong Rabbits, led by Bandersnatch (Daisy Berry) have to stop the Wonderlanders getting that key.
Everyone is in a tiz – the White Rabbit (Oliver Card) is running around even faster than usual, the Right Royal Red King (John Parker) is more confused than usual and even the normally on-top-of-things Right Royal Red Queen (Martin Porter) is worried.
They have all read the Big Book and they know that what they need, the only person who can save Wonderland, is Alice.
… enter Harry (Emma Hawkes), a handsome young prince (no relation or resemblance to other princes called Harry). But he’s not what they want. Where is Alice?
Eventually the real Alice (Bryony Gale), with blue dress and long blonde hair, appears and the Wonderlanders can start their quest to get the key before the Wrong Red Queen gets her nasty hands on it.
It is a clever story and this production, directed by Molly Walker, is great fun, with lots of bright ideas. These include a colourful alternative for scene changes – instead of curtain down or a darkened stage with figures in black scuttling to move sets and props, there is a chorus with colourful parasols of all sizes which are opened and closed in sequence, quite distracting the audience’s attention to what is going on behind.
Favourite characters from both books make their different marks – Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (Bryan Farrell and Marie Stubbs) have a lot of fun, as does the swashbuckling Cheshire Cat (River Munday), but it really is hat’s off to the Mad Hatter (Dominic Morgan making his Shaftesbury debut) who all but steals the scene, with his crazy inventions.
Personally, I missed having live music – the songs are not particularly catchy and only the big party Shout really gets the audience going. But that’s a small criticism – you can expect lots of laughs if you go down the rabbit hole into Shaftesbury’s Wonderland.
FC