Nostalgic escape down the rabbit hole
Festooned in pastel pink, purple and green woodland flora, the stage at the Lionel Wendt resembled a fairy glade, dimly lit like the first crack of dawn. Then the lights went out: the cue for the ‘flower ensemble’ (wood nymphs with bodies enwrapped in flames of glittering, mossy luminous green) to materialize out of darkness and do their fast-paced whirlwind dance: the prelude to a heady tumble-in into the heart of Wonderland.
Pix by Tai Hsin and Priyantha Wickramarachchi
Alice @ Wonderland, presented by the Elizabeth Moir Senior School, takes on Jonathan Yukich’s rendition of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, viewed- among other things through the generations- as a children’s story and a lampooning of Victorian society. A lot of the delightful play stays faithful to the original nonsensical novel, with the pivotal difference being that the new Alice comes from the 21st Century, with- of course- her dead cell phone and demand for at least a cafe where she can recharge it.
Rachel Hayward made a fine Alice. The Alice we loved as children, though mystified by the madness of the wonderland, still seemed to be privy to some of the mayhem happening around, falling easily into the rhythm of the nonsensical conversation with her child’s purity (or percipience). But that childlike, intuitive tuning-in with the fantasy world may have been robbed of Yukich’s Alice by her mobile phone and all the technology that had engulfed her.
Louisa Deemer played White Rabbit. She set the tone early for the frenzied mayhem of Wonderland, capturing the timorous flurry of that animal eternally scurrying . Louisa was adorable, and probably no one will complain that the original White Rabbit also had to be pompous, toady and old.
Three Mylvaganams hosted the mad tea party. Leonid Mylvaganam did an utterly nutsy Mad Hatter- a crazy (and reluctant) host weaving a sticky web of wacky verbal nonsense, hilarious especially when he, with the sleepy Dormouse (Esme) and March Hare (Tara), jumped on to their chairs to sing ‘twinkle, twinkle little bat’ heavy gangsta style.
Anuk Gunesekera who played Humpty Dumpty, even while poised on his rather tall wall, delighted with a great rendition of the pompous, self-centered egg with its complacent, sniggering humour.
The King of Hearts (Joshua Perera) came across as a sleepy, comic, browbeaten husband (rather attractive for- or because of- all that).
The Cheshire Cat- smart and at times infuriating because of his cheekily, tantalizingly unforthcoming manner- was handled expertly by the puppeteers Anuk Dissanayake and Amana Rishad, though the giant luminous mask of the grinning feline could at times seem spooky (though probably the original Cheshire Cat who could leave his smile lingering while the rest of its body vanished had also something of a phantomish sinisterness).
The crew was as painstaking as the cast, under Anushka Senanayake’s expert direction and Melissa Fisher’s wonderful choreography. It was quite a spectacle visually, and such magic transformations as Alice shrinking and then growing tall were deftly managed.
The costumes had been done with exquisite care while the set, light and artwork design also combined to transport you into that croquet-lawned, chess board world of duchesses and dodos, and mock turtles and Jabberwocks.
It was a nostalgic escape down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass into a brilliant evocation of a world we can’t get enough of, and was given immediacy by the infatuation with texting and social media that Alice brought in.
Elizabeth Moir has, over the years, built up a solid reputation for their stage productions. Alice @ Wonderland, a colourful achievement with an edge, stands out a very fine feather on their cap (or, keeping in with the spirit of things, a magnificent Gryphon feather in their hat?).
