Alice in Wonderland

St Cuthbert’s Church had been delightfully transformed into a Wonderland, the audience being immersed within a beautiful fairytale woodland setting, enhanced by subtle green lighting. With a cast of 37 to costume, the variety and quality of them was very good.

Enter the White Rabbit, (Mark Ward), through the centre of the audience, tense and anxious waiting for Alice to fall down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland, in order to find the key to the Great Clock in order to prevent Wonderland being cast into darkness. With an interesting script by Ben Crocker, it was essential that the story was delivered by the cast in a clear manner so that the story was not lost. The cast and their diction was clear and, being sat towards the rear of the Church, volume was also good.

Eve Bryant, as Alice, brought an endearing mix of curiosity and determination to the role, and was well cast opposite Charlotte Sprot as Harry. In this story we had a Right Queen (Becca Grodentz), and a Wrong Queen (Izzie Porter). Becca lit up the stage with both her characterisation and her vocals, whilst Izzie was  very evil to everyone, including being nasty to fellow rascals, The Bad Rabbits, even cutting off the tail of her hench rabbit Bandersnatch ( Becky Harris-Cook). Being also picked on by Mrs Wrongrabbit, (Corinna Laughton), the audience felt sorry for Bandersnatch and Becky’s performance in this role was strong.

Some really enjoyable clever scenes, including the goodies being chased back to Wonderland by the baddies and, caught between two mirrors, roles were reversed as the goodies passed through to become baddies until they went through the second mirror, with the same happening with the baddies. Alice shrinking was also cleverly handled, with Liliana Ward appearing as Little Alice. Another very funny scene visually was the entry into a room where everyone who enter fall in love. Vocals throughout were very good, including some big numbers involving most of the cast.

The comedy duo Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, played by Izzy Marrison and Maisie Double-Cook, provided some excellent slapstick including a food fight-Stand outs in the dance numbers as well, Izzy and Maisie were excellent, and I really enjoyed their performance.

Ciaran Fallon was the Mad Hatter, literally, using a number of wacky accents, and worked very well opposite Gavin Kemp as the March Hare.

The good and bad Rabbits contained a mixture of excellent characterisations who were very expressive whenever on the stage. Well done to Luke Fairweather, Alison Heasman, Toni Morina, Dean Akrill, Lyra Gregory and Mary Carpenter.

The Cheshire Cat (Abbi Clarke), Dormouse (Libby Pooley), and Jabberwocky (Arwyn Harris-Cook), made up the supporting cast, along with a junior and adult ensemble.

Chatting to Directors Carol Rowell and Izzie Porter afterwards, this is another thriving community theatre group that welcomes everyone. There were so children in the cast and its delightful to see that the future of community theatre is safe in their hands. Thank you for a lovely evening.

 

 

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