JUST FOR KIDS? CONTRARIWISE! WE ARE ALL ALICE
In a fleeting moment of meta-theatre when the monstrous crow (well, umbrella) had the house shouting “Behind you!”, Tweedleee grumpily cried “house lights! Everyone! This is a serious adaptation of a classic , it’s not a pantomime!”. To which of course came the cry “Oh yes it is!”.
But actually, he was right, for all the panto merriment in it. Joanna Carrick’s lively four-hander is just as Lewis Carroll would have liked it, down to Georgia Redgrave’s perfect characterisation of Alice, a keen-eyed polite yet argumentativeVictorian child confronted with an adult world of absurd, illogical, bossy yet easily-offended individuals.
For in all the best adaptations of both the Alice books, the fact that people happen to be caterpillars, rabbits, playing-cards and an egg can never disguise their identity as grown-ups through a child’s lens. Probably, given Dodgson’s reality, eccentrially Oxford grown-ups. The chidlren around me – from teens down to a 7-month old baby thrilled throughout at the colours and music – clearly saw that easily: Emily Jane Kerr’s irritable Humpty Dumpty is everyone’s pedantic pompous teacher, Alec Murray’s Hatter the entertaining but unreliable uncle prone to lead a chorus of “Where did you get that hat?”, Joseph Russell’s Dormouse, emerging blearily from a giant teapot with a long mad story about the treacle-well, is any of us attempting an impromptu bedtime story with an uncooperatively questioning child. As for Jabberwocky, the frumious bandersnatch is every scary football in human life…
Kerru, Murray and Russell of course are all the other characters too, starting out as a rabbit jazz-cabaret and morphing elegantly into the rest with the assistance of Katy Latham and Betty Read’s designs, against a charmingly furnished nursery) . Indeed one joy of such productions is that while being good fun for us adults, when you see them as a child their obvious ingenuities encourage the conviction that yeah, you can go home and put on a show yourself, with tablecloths, upside-down chairs and home-made cardboard hats! Anyone can! That this revelation is a boon in the age of the children enslaved to the screen and smartphone cannot be overstressed.
So the two hours including interval pass with joy all round, some very good jokes (no wonder the poor Cheshire cat gets a hairball trying to describe the March Hare) and some cracking new songs – not least the chorus in which all rapidly joined of the flamenco Red-Queen going it large with a lyric of “Paella, FAjita, enchilada!” while throwing around her red skirts. But we’re in Victoriana: tradition matters, so there’s where-did-you-get-that-hat reprised, and Bumps a Daisy and other fine snatches from our common ancestry.
Moreover – and some would have wantd to start with this original element, but literary enthusiasm overtook me: Redgrave’s Alice is also a gymnast and aerialist. She quite frequently upside down in a hoop overhead or doing a somersault or handstand with aplomb. As a lively child would wish. Bravo!
www.redrosechain.com to 4 Jan
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