Whether or not your life is in the doldrums, this is a show to lift you out of them. I last saw ZooNation’s The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in 2017 in the Roundhouse, and tonight’s affair (not press night) is a much slicker version with up-to-date (“fake news”) references. There is no fourth wall: it is well and truly breached, as they infiltrate the theatre.
The audience is as hyper as they are: told to make as much noise as they like, this is hip hop after all. And, six lucky members of the audience are invited to join in the tea party at the end—to sit at the table and then join in the dance. Quite a night out. Cheers and clapping throughout.
Two hours and forty minutes of high-octane break-dancing in its varieties, witty dialogue and lyrics, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and music that blasts you out of your seats. People are dancing up the stairs as they leave.
Kate Prince’s rewrite of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is clever. The first half (slightly overlong, but who’s complaining?) is set in an asylum, the second in Wonderland to which the inmates escape.
A new doctor, earnest Ernst (Tommy Franzen, his solos electrifying as always), is loaded with case notes for the motley band of eccentrics. The Mad Hatter (twinkly-eyed Bradley Charles) has mercury poisoning from being a milliner, and sadly is doomed, coughing blood into his handkerchief. He needs to find someone to take over his role at the head of his brothers and sisters in arms.
Alice (Natasha Gooden) has body size issues; the Queen (Nethra Menon) is a bully with anger issues; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (Harrison Dowzell and Lindon Barr) have a battle over a rattle (breakin’ battle, hip hop rhymes throughout); the Cheshire Cat is a cool cat, with some hyper-paranoia, to a reggae beat (Andry Oporia, a familiar face amongst many new).
Oporia also voices the Dormouse, a Muppet-like puppet in a big teapot, who drops off to sleep just as Alice is about to kiss him, having serenaded her with offers she can’t refuse. The White Rabbit (Ryan Hughes) has anxiety about time (“crippled by time”, “what if time could be erased?”); the March Hare (Elijah Smith) is mad, of course. But, what is normal? The best people are bonkers.
This is what Ernst finds out. Therapy, ha! They are his tea party therapy. When he passes out (he’s asthmatic), they steal his security pass and escape to Wonderland, carrying him with them.
The interval is worth missing a drink for, as we watch over a dozen stagehands build Wonderland. The set and costume designs (Ben Stones) are fabulous; the lighting (Natasha Chivers) is magical, it could be Christmas; the choreography is dynamite (as one expects from ZooNation’s original cast and Kate Prince); Prince’s lyrics in collaboration with composers Josh Cohen and D J Walde are droll and incisive, and their music compositions lift the roof and our spirits.
The set is two-tier: on the top walkway are the music decks, a shelf of vinyl records and three female singers, joined by the three guys who were the institute’s quack doctors. They are fabulous. A gig, no less. And best of all, we have a narrator, Betty. Malinda Parris, with her gorgeous warm Northern accent, also has another persona, revealed at the end. And, is that a Kamala Harris reference: “I’m speaking”, as she stands up to the bigoted doctors?
Ernst comes out of his torpor, and what a transformation. The tea table, of course, is a dancing platform. Not only does he shed his inhibitions, his views, but his doctor’s coat, trousers and shirt. In colourful baggy pants and stripy vest, he outperforms them all, terrific though they are in their own disciplines, no duffers here. I love them all.
Hard to believe that ZooNation was founded by Prince in 2002: it’s been a great journey. Some faces I recognise from way back, many are new, but the beat, the charisma, the rapport (as they enter down the aisles shining torches) has only got better and better. Now that’s a wonderland. It’s a MAD MAD World, and the “Mad for Me” Hatter needs someone to pass his baton on to. Who better than the converted doctor Ernst? The Hatter’s ‘mad’ outfit suits him.
Characterisation is great, acrobatic solos are showcases and the ensemble is infectious in their abandon. I’m betting The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party will come close to outshining its confrere in the main house, Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A conjunction made in dance heaven. That tripod camera might just be the link between the two.
“The performance was researched and devised alongside those with lived experience, however we acknowledge that everyone’s experience of mental health is different.” Swept along by the music, the dance and the intriguing split personalities (subtext subtle), I see no offence in it, just an energetic celebration of difference.
The production is dedicated to sadly missed Teneisha Bonner, who was the original Red Queen.