Alice in Wonderland

For its age of,164 years old, this silly nonsense but brilliantly written play is still as fresh and entertaining as the day it was first performed. This adaptation of a young girl’s dream with its well-known and time respected script together with Mike Carter’s thirteen new songs adding much humour and colour to the plot was just pure enjoyment for two hours. A talented cast of forty-eight children aged between seven and eighteen and speaking parts for twenty-two characters made this a highlight production for me. The band of three also included two children.

The technical team did a splendid task of keeping the music and the singing at the right levels. We could hear every word that the characters said including the majority of words which were spoken by Alice (Elsa Cannon) who was in every scene throughout the performance. She is the one who knits these weird dream sequences together right to the end with the final “Wonderland” song. She was a stalwart actor.

Another busy character was White Rabbit (Ellie Leaver) who was flitting from scene to scene and despite her song “Late for the Duchess” she was never late for any of her many entrances - neither did she stop moving all the time she was on stage. The other twenty speaking parts were all very well cast and should be proud of their sterling performances. The remainder of the cast were in the ensemble numbers and excelled in the enhanced  concerted sound.

The costumes for the eclectic mix of assorted creatures were bright, colourful and very well thought out. Mice, turtle, Gryphon, fish, caterpillar to mention a few animals were great and the human section - Queen, Duchess, cook, Tweedledum and Tweedledee were also very obviously apt.

The stage was an open area with large painted cards, mushrooms and bright cartoon coloured scenery. This used to be a quite small stage but it has been adapted over the years to make a much larger area for the cast - especially if you need it for about forty-eight children marching on and off at regular intervals.

Choreography for that number of people can be quite demanding but with this venue’s stage and its large dimensions a clever number of sequences were able to be performed and enjoyed by an enthusiastic audience.   

Congratulations to all the cast, the backstage crew, the production team and musicians for a superb evening of entertainment.  In the words of song number thirteen - “Consider your verdict” the reply is song number five  - “Wow! Wow! Wow!”

 

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