Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Review

★★★★★

Stephanie Green | 05 Dec 2016
Published in The Skinny.

A treat. What better way to celebrate the festive season than this rambunctious, zany version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written and directed by Anthony Neilson plus songs by Nick Powell, puppets and spell-binding special effects. With all the topsy-turvy logic, the vivid colours of a dream, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

Birdsong, fairground lights and music introduce a golden Edwardian summer and picnickers as a boat comes gliding by and we’re in Alice’s world. There’s all the well-known riddles, word play, puns, philosophical and logical conundrums adults remember but made hugely enjoyable for children too: plenty of slapstick, spiralling into sheer silliness – just what the seven year olds in the audience adore. Particularly hilarious are the distinctive walks of animal characters, notably the White Rabbit’s shimmy.

Staying close to Carroll’s original, there are some inspired changes: The Rev Dodgson (Carroll’s real name), not Alice’s sister, sends her to sleep and the trial, not about stolen tarts, but a Mock Turtle soup recipe. A large sun, also a screen, shows great animations: Alice’s descent down the rabbit hole, and the Cheshire Cat’s floating grin. Alice’s changing size is wonderfully done (but no spoilers here).

The costumes are stunning, in particular the Gryphon’s layered feathers and the striped, furry caterpillar. Enormous hats are a feature, the Duchess’s very like Tenniel – but also tricorne hats with googly, shiny eyes attached for the frog and fish footmen.

The most well-loved characters are here: the engaging Mad Hatter (Tam Dean Burn) beside himself with his unanswerable riddle, and the March Hare’s toothiness, the Duchess (Alan Francis) a Pantomime Dame, and Duchess’s Cook performed with wicked glee by Gabriel Quigley. Watch out for the flying plates. The caterpillar (Zoë Hunter) whose infuriatingly changeable opinions are delivered with superb timing. The Gryphon, or Gryff, a Welshman of course, played by David Carlyle, shouts out Tourette’s style. Isobel McArthur’s sobbing Mock Turtle is glorious and Alice, the debut stage performance for Jess Peet, is self-assured, well able to stand up to the nonsense around her. Great ensemble acting gets hysterical, higher and higher as the performance goes on. A terrific show.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Edinburgh Lyceum, until 31 Dec

http://lyceum.org.uk

Published in the Skinny Magazine online.

Saturday, 26 November 2016

Rambert - Ghost Dances

Rambert – Ghost Dances, Frames and Tomorrow

Feature by Stephanie Green | 26 Nov 2016

Published in The Skinny Magazine

The iconic Ghost Dances, [★★★★★] visceral, sinister and melancholic, with its meld of skeletal Ghosts and folk dancing Dead, still in its 36th year, holds its power. Inspired by the military takeover of Chile, this is a non-polemical, imagistic piece, sadly still with universal relevance. In Rambert’s 90th year, what better than to revive one of their most popular pieces, choreographed by their former Artistic Director, Christopher Bruce?

The sound of the wind, and the arid Andean backdrop give this an elemental atmosphere. The three skeletal Ghosts wear terrifying skull-masks influenced by the Mexican holiday, The Day of the Dead. Their movements are reptilian, lithe with sudden stops, eyes probing the audience in a chilling way. We are implicated in the universal fact of death. The Ghosts jump in off-balance barrel turns, or pose with arms swinging to suggest their provisional nature in contrast to the zombie-like approach of the Dead, dressed in colourful, tatty clothes.

A live band performs the melancholic Latin American music with its distinctive breathy flute, inspired by the Chilean folk group Inti-Illimani. A curiously defiant gaiety is mirrored in the folkloric dance steps as the Dead relive the past in striking duets: a girl in red, and a man with tie pulled playfully by his partner. The Ghosts weave amongst them then suddenly claim them – a particularly striking image is women raised aloft as if hanged. Death is brutal, unexpected. A brilliant, must-see production.

Frames [★★★☆☆] choreographed by Alexander Whitley is interesting, but one waited with bated breath for the steel rods to come tumbling down. There is a startling image when the ensemble creates unfolding shapes with the rods like wings but overall, despite impressive dancers, there was no sense of relationship between dance moves and rods.

As for Tomorrow [★★☆☆☆], this piece does Lucy Guerin’s career no favours. A split stage shows dancers in white rags twitching with spasmodic gestures symbolizing the psychic turmoil in ‘Macbeth’, the charismatic Miguel Altunaga drawing one’s eye. But on the other side, dancers in black suits mime like actors in an embarrassing am-dram production. The plot is run backwards. Why? Not a clever piece of deconstructivist post-modernism, just banal.

http://edtheatres.com/rambert