Alice In Wonderland

Welcome to Magpie Performers, our newest member of NODA here in District E12. It was a pleasure to come and meet you all, introduce ourselves and give a few words of encouragement to the cast before the show opened.   This is an all-inclusive  group with a large cast of 24, included adults and younger performers, many played multiple characters and  several of whom were enjoying their first experience on stage.

This story of Alice was well written  by Bridie, with all it’s well known characters and this didn’t disappoint. With lots of colourful characters and equally colourful costumes.  The set was well designed with the rabbit hole down which Alice must tumble and lots of charming red and white mushrooms giving  atmosphere and was a great backdrop to the production.

Rose Darby was the iconic Alice with an incredibly large amount of lines to remember which she did without hesitation. She was extremely confident especially considering this had been her first show. I will try to list all the cast and forgive me if I miss out anyone. White Rabbit was played by Jessy Chaston and Alex Oliver was the Mouse along with Ashley Hawes in his incredible Dodo costume.  Zoe-May Marjoram, Dylan Snell and Cassie Elliston looked fabulous in their heart costumes and painted faces as   the 5, 7 and 2  of Hearts. Jake Turner was the friendly character Bill the Lizard.  Tweedledee and Tweedledum were played by  Ash Hawley-Thomas and Flossie Booker, both were confident with good clear speaking voices. Rachel Hawley-Thomas played the very haughty Duchess along with Jay Rednall as Pig. Lisa Darby was Cook and  also the Gryphon with an incredible mask.

 Stacey Page was the excitable Mad Hatter, with James Silverthorne looking very dashing in his check coat playing the March Hare.  Gabriella  Garnham played the delightfully sleepy Dormouse and Franklin Dixon as a very green looking Caterpillar. Kit Cracknell was the scary Queen of Hearts,  a very forceful character who would chop off everyones heads if they so much as spoke a word out of place and was accompanied by the King of Hearts, Tom Schulen who was equally scary.  Louise Fosdick was Driver with Steven Fosdick as the Mockturtle.  The Cheshire Cat Puppet was ingenious in design with 3 umbrellas representing the large eyes and mouth behind which were Elle Hawley-Thomas, Jayne Wadsley and Neil Wadsley.

As you can tell by these descriptions all the individual costumes looked fabulous and I’m sure all the cast loved wearing them. They must have taken hours of painstaking work to put them all together along with the incredible masks.  The make-up also looked great. Well done to all concerned.

I think all the cast were very excited about being on stage and being part of this delightful story and all got thoroughly involved in their characterisations.  Congratulations to you all, you were amazing. This was a great prouduction Bridie, and you, all the team  and cast should be very proud of their achievements. 

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