Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland - 22nd November 2019

Tonight‘s visit to Kirkham Grammar School was to see Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.

This was a wonderfully surreal trip down the rabbit hole to see some fantastic physical theatre, as well as some surreal characterisations of Lewis Carroll’s characters made popular with Alice in Wonderland.  I was greeted warmly by helpers at the school and shown to my table as this was presented in a cabaret seating style. The show starts with an excitable and playful Alice played by Olivia Coupe who was playing at home whilst her older sister played by Anya Baxter is playing violin. The music for this performance was provided by a student band made up of clarinet, flute, piano, trombone and trumpet all played by students from the school.

With the introduction of the White Rabbit played by Maddie Chaya, we drop down the rabbit hole into the amazing world of Wonderland. There was some very inventive physical theatre used to take Alice through the doors into the garden and to meet the Queen of Hearts played by the very energetic Ria Sharma. The cast worked hard to create this wonderful world that the audience were swept through.  

The set and scenery was simple, it was very effective and was supported with back projection at the rear of the stage.  Most of the action took place in front of the stage on a chequerboard dance floor which was very fitting for the performance.  There was good use of spacing with the cast utilising the whole of the room, in and out of the tables, on the stage and in front of the stage.

I’d like to congratulate the cast namely Olivia Coupe who played Alice, she had a fantastic character and projected very well with this very wordy role. Reactions were constant throughout the whole piece and I never saw a break in her character once - well done. The White Rabbit played by Maddie Chaya is an iconic role in this story and she did really well to create a sense of excitement and the need to find out more, well done. The Mad Hatter played by Joseph Ingham truly was mad! He showed great facial acting, lovely characterisation and bags of energy - Joseph did a great job with exciting the audience at the tea party.  Queen of Hearts played by Ria Sharma was really quite scary! Her energy was infectious and her characterisation was perfectly on point and projection was certainly not a problem!  King of Hearts is played by Kyle O’Keefe and he supported Ria very well in the role of King of Hearts, the downtrodden husband to the real power in Wonderland.  Kyle had a lovely character, well projected and delivered with good timing. Another popular character from the story is the Cheshire Cat played by Harry Burrow, he did a great job portraying the smiley feline character.  Harry had the audience laughing quite a few times as his character was full of energy and his lines were delivered very well.  The Duchess played by Madeleine Mustow came across with professionalism and energy with her lines ringing around the auditorium. A very difficult character to act, The Caterpillar played by Lily Hitchin -  hats off to her efforts with a tricky costume and she did well to maintain her character throughout very difficult movement around the scenes good job Lily.  Joining the mad hatter at the tea party was of course the March Hare played by Laura Stacey and I have to say Laura‘s face never once dropped and her character was solid throughout the whole performance. She was very engaging to watch and a firm favourite with the audience.  Dormouse - Sophie Minten was played beautifully, she had great projection with her lines and her timing as her sleepy character was just right. There were some lovely supporting roles from performers such as the Mock Turtle played by Joshua Horton, The Mouse by Rose Ansell, Alices big sister and cook Anya Baxter, as well as the Whiting and Table played by Grace Barber, The Snail by Brooke Medhurst and also the grown-up Alice, towards the end of the show, played by Molly Pickup who was also the stage manager in her final show at Kirkham grammar!  There were some lovely singing provided by Grace Barber and Brooke Medhurst as well as Abigail Johnson well done girls. One of my favourite songs was definitely the Soup Song which really was quite entertaining and had many audience members chuckling to themselves.  This performance had everything from ballroom dancing to flamingos playing croquet and every scene was given plenty of energy and was thoroughly thought out by the production team. The costumes were clever and very effective.

This is the first performance I’ve seen from Kirkham Grammar School and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. I do look forward to seeing more performances from the young talented cast members at KGS.

Well done to the production team of Mrs Latham, Miss Leeming, Mrs Sutcliffe and Mrs Hancock as well as other staff members and students that helped behind-the-scenes, this was a good production of a difficult piece and you’ve all, clearly, worked very hard.

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