The conceit of this first outing from the recently (pre-Covid) formed WhimsiCo company is, as you might guess, mainly involved with the Wonderland of Lewis Caroll, along with other of his works – but with a different Alice, not the Alice Liddell of the original.
This Alice is a bereaved, confused, and hurting young woman who sometimes seeks comfort and distraction from her woes by plunging into Caroll’s fantasy world.
Exploration of grief, love, identity and growing up is a stated aim of the piece, and there is some of this in the company’s own words – but the real joy of it and by far the main part of the evening is in the company’s re-working of the words of Caroll, starting with a loud and thrillling rendition of Jabberwocky (Pedant’s note: it was the borogoves, not the borogroves, that were all mimsy. Just saying).
It goes on, with massive energy and verve from the nine-strong (very strong) cast, to the appearance of every Caroll character and situation that we all remember – not necessarily in the same order.
The idea of taking comfort from Wonderland is slightly odd: it’s not a comforting world, and one that the original Alice was mostly seeking to escape from, rather than to. But it is a world that WhimsiCo brilliantly re-creates for us, in all its hilariously mad, irrational and sometimes cruel craziness.
In the end, though, the piece does come to a denouement of some peace, hope and calm – helped massively by the evocative and poignant music of folk duo Humm. A memorable evening.
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Reviewer: John Christopher Wood | Star rating: ****