Cold autumn has come too soon, wind and rain… do we need some brightness, amusing distraction and magic... Christopher Wheeldons’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has those in abundance. He steals, pastiches and parodies with insouciance—what’s that Picasso quote—boldly pulling tricks and signposting clues en route. There is even some minimal play on words: ART / TART / START (Nicholas Wright scenario).
If you know Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), you don't need a synopsis, but will delight in seeing Christopher Wheeldon’s tongue-in-cheek interpretation, back for a fifth time. If you don't know it, you’ll be charmed, if possibly confused, by the visual spectacle. As is the young man, a musical theatre fan, next to me, his first time at the ballet.
If you’re a balletomane, you’ll spot the ‘references’ to Frederick Ashton, Petipa, even Balanchine (the row of dancing cards), and more. If you've seen this ballet before, as I have (2011, 2012, 2013, 2017), you’ll be pleased to be reminded of Wheeldon’s cheeky but oh so clever version of a classic.
Carroll’s mathematical logic and concertina time, dance’s geometry and musicality and the mind’s malleability Wheeldon and his creative colleagues capture with inventive skill. Quite an intoxicating fairground ride, though it does have its quiet moments, if only to calm our minds. It all ticks along nicely under Natasha Katz’s perspicacious lighting to Joby Talbot’s metronomic score.
I pay particular attention to the music this time, after reading Talbot’s article in the programme notes: “a violin tuned up a semitone for the ‘highly-strung’ Queen of Hearts”, “a celesta and ram’s horn trumpet for the White Rabbit”, and “North African percussion for the Caterpillar”, and five percussionists, his music defining character and situation in true cinema style.
Bob Crowley’s Lotte Reiniger-inspired designs, coupled with projection (which looks interactive) and video designs from Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington and Toby Olié puppets, are out of this world, as they are meant to be in Alice’s surreal parallel universe, the Cheshire Cat a particular delight (managed by at least seven, if not more, puppeteers).
There are magic mushrooms from the slinky Arabian Caterpillar (Nicol Edmonds), which gains Alice entry into the Queen of Hearts' neurotic household and garden (are those sharply-pruned bushes Daleks in disguise?) over which she rules with an executioner’s axe. Quite a mind-blowing trip: waltzing Flowers, Flamingos as croquet mallets and tiny Hedgehogs as the balls (scampering children from the Royal Ballet School are so sweet).
Principal Guest Artist Lauren Cuthbertson, on whom the role of Alice was made in 2011, is now the Queen: there’s a journey for you. And she takes to it like a true drama Queen of the screen, which Wheeldon sends up outrageously. He does a ‘Matthew Bourne’ (in the audience, as is Robert Fairchild who was the lead in Wheeldon’s An American in Paris) with her Rose Adagio. Cuthbertson is fearless (she does a cartwheel…) in her undignified balletic pratfalls, which almost bring the house down. She takes a bow.
The audience shrieks with laughter—it’s pure music hall. And Gary Avis as the Duchess, her rival in the croquet game, if he’s never played Widow Simone in Ashton’s La fille mal gardee, is to the manner born.
Kristen McNally as the Duchess’s Cook with her cleaver is also game for larger than life acting, falling for the Queen’s Executioner (Kevin Emerton the Butler to the Liddell family in the other life at Christ Church College) and his axe. The Home Sweet Home sampler conceals a lot. I’ll say no more on that score.
Victorian human beings as fantastical animals and fantasy figures, revealing their inner (supressed?) personalities... Carroll is the White Rabbit (James Hay), of course. The Queen is Alice’s strict Mother who unfairly dismisses servant Jack (Knave of Hearts) for taking the tart Alice gives him.
William Bracewell and Francesca Hayward make a charming diffident pair swept along by circumstances. Their choreography is not particularly outstanding, but serves its purpose as a small part of the dazzling whole. From ‘proper’ Victorian household to lunacy and psychosis, and then to a final scene in the present day, the house now on the heritage trail, and a photographer… is this the spirit of Carroll or the White Rabbit in his pink shades? A scratch behind the ear is a giveaway.
It’s good to see Steven McRae tapping his way back as the Mad Hatter in the company of his Tea Party guests, March Hare Valentino Zucchetti and Dormouse Sophie Allnatt. Leo Dixon as Fish Footman and Daichi Ikarashi as Frog Footman both jump with ‘Jeremy Fisher’ panache. I mustn’t forget Bennett Gartside as the long-suffering husband.
One for the family and first timers, then, this exuberant three-hour co-production between The Royal Ballet and The National Ballet of Canada will be live in cinemas Tuesday 15 October 2024 with encore showings from Sunday 20 October 2024.