Robert Tanitch reviews wonder.land at National Theatre/Olivier, London.
Charles Dodgson, Oxford don, obsessed with mathematics, logic and photographing little girls, publishes the most famous children’s book in 1865.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been staged, filmed, televised and endlessly analysed ever since.
Damon Albarn, Moira Buffini and Rufus Norris use the novel as a springboard for their digital version aimed at teenagers who are on their smart phones texting and on-line playing computer games.
Audiences brought up on Lewis Carroll’s text and John Tenniel’s drawings are liable to be very disappointed.
wonder.land had its premiere in Manchester in July and the present production is based on the response of the Manchester School kids to that try-out.
Muscular and energetic though the performance is, the actual show still remains a work in progress. Both Albarn, who wrote the music, and Buffini, who wrote the book and lyrics, are new to musical theatre and it shows.
Alice (Lois Chimimba) is a child of mixed race. Her parents are separated. She’s in trouble at school, bullied by the girls and the headmistress. “I hate being me!” she says. The real world is grey and shabby. The imagined world is surreal and garish. She creates a white avatar to represent her in wonder.land.
It’s Rufus Norris’s production, Rae Smith’s set, the computer graphics and projections by 59 Productions, the weird costumes by Katrina Lindsay and the strong language that audiences will come out of the theatre talking about. The caterpillar is witty. The giant teapot is great.
One performance stands out and that is Anna Francolini’s amusing caricature of the headmistress who sings “I’m right!” I think most parents, however, will side with her when she confiscates Alice’s smart phone.
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