The strange and surreal world of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ is the Christmas treat at the Egg this year. Steve Wright is Venue’s mirror man.

It’ll be quite a trip. Like a sort of Monty Python for young people.” Lee Lyford, Theatre Royal Bath’s director of big, colourful and brilliantly bizarre kids’ shows (‘The Nutcracker’, ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ – both Venue five-stars) and vast, gripping community plays (recent TRB triumph ‘Ben Hur’) is enthusing about his new production. It’s an adaptation of ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’, the sequel to Lewis Carroll’s inimitably strange children’s classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’. And, like those other triumphs, it’s a collaboration with writer Hattie Naylor, who’s adapted Carroll’s script for the stage.

Hattie’s play was first staged, in fact, at the Tobacco Factory back in 2007, where a version directed by Andy Burden received (another!) five-star review in these pages. And this Christmas, as it has done twice before, Bath kids’ theatre the egg gets the benefit of the unique Naylor/Lyford synergy.

When Alice finds herself the other side of the Looking Glass, she finds a world where flowers talk, books are written backwards and trains jump over rivers. Bewildered and bemused, Alice must wend her way across a chessboard land where the right moves will make her the queen – meeting, along the way, a motley crew including Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Walrus and the Carpenter and an array of living chess pieces.

“It is similar in feel to ‘…Wonderland’,” Lee reflects. “This one, though, is based on a chess game, and every time Alice jumps a space she goes into another world.” Just like its predecessor, ‘Looking Glass’ features all manner of magical, larger-than-life characters and much silliness – verbal, philosophical and physical. “It has the same lyrical, nonsensical language as ‘Wonderland’ – it’s like one of those dreams where you’re running up an escalator that’s not moving.

“There’s no morality, no message to the books – they are just fun for their own sake. Hattie makes the comparison with Dr Seuss – a mad world for kids to get immersed in. This production, if it’s about anything, is about Alice finding her voice and becoming an adult. As she progresses through this world, she has to use cunning and guile. The characters bully her, pick on her, and it’s not until the end that she learns to take control. If Carroll did have a theme in mind, it’s about a child trying to understand an adult world – to make sense of the rules and regulations adults invent, which don’t always make much sense.”

Each one of Lee and Hattie’s collaborations has been a colourful, imaginative, seductive triumph. What’s the recipe? “We try to create worlds and believable characters, and to tell stories in the most exciting way possible. And we give all elements of the production equal weight. Writing, sound, design, choreography” everything is as integral as everything else.”

The cast includes Bristol-raised actress Louise Plowright, who played the lead role of Donna in Catherine Johnson’s ‘Mamma Mia’ in the West End for four years, also starring in Johnson’s ‘Suspension’ at Bristol Old Vic. Elsewhere, Alexis Terry (‘The Nutcracker’’s Clara) plays Alice, and the cast also includes Bristol actor Paul Mundell, star of successive Tobacco Factory Christmas shows.

Music comes from Paul Dodgson, who provided a memorable soundtrack for ‘The Nutcracker’. “There are songs from all different genres, all very silly but beautifully sung with five-part harmonies. Jessica [Worrall, designer] has also created a visual treat for audiences, a beautiful world to enter and get lost in. As Alice goes further into this world, so more layers are uncovered. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that the world gets stranger and stranger as she goes deeper inside. And there are all sorts of optical illusions played with the set.

“The show has every possible flavour: it’s scary at moments, but there’s also lots of humour, it’s visually very rich and musically incredibly exciting. For all its frivolity, it’s very faithful to the book, to the madness of the book and of its characters. I think the only thing we have done is given Alice more of a journey: she changes and develops, there’s something to keep us watching rather than just, ‘oh look, here’s another funny character’ which can be the problem, theatrically, with any ‘Alice’ production.”

Rather than morality or logic, says Hattie, the tales offer joyous anarchy – and some unforgettable characters. “Carroll creates an illogical, anarchic world which children love and relate to. The characters are so vivid and iconic that you’re carried along by their sheer colour and immensity. And the dialogue is brilliant – Tweedledum and Humpty Dumpty are both blindingly unpleasant and fantastically rude. “

ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS IS AT THE EGG, BATH FROM FRI 10 DEC-SUN 9 JAN. FOR REVIEW CLICK HERE.
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2010

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