3 hours ago
7
Will Todd’s family-opera version of the Alice in Wonderland stories, premiered at Opera Holland Park in 2013 and well travelled since, has been something of a signature show for the company. For several years it was performed on mini-stages dotted around the lawn behind the theatre, with the audience following the musicians around. Now it has been brought into the main theatre, with Leslie Travers’s picture-postcard Victoriana set elements adapted by Ceci Calf, and with Martin Duncan reworking his original direction.
Todd and his librettist Maggie Gottlieb give us some of the most familiar characters and scenes from Lewis Carroll’s stories and nudge them into a gentle rescue-story scenario. Alice is sheltering in a pet shop with her horrid brothers when she releases the White Rabbit from his cage and sets her Wonderland adventure in motion. Eventually, having puzzled with the Cheshire Cat, witnessed the demise of an Ofsted-worthy Humpty Dumpty (“regular assessment’s a social investment”) and had tea with the Mad Hatter, she saves her new friends from penal servitude in the Queen of Hearts’s jam-tart factory and finds herself back in the pet shop – where, thanks to the Rabbit having magically acquired opposable thumbs, all ends happily. The singers take their bows and then chat with the children who have been watching from cushions at the front.
Todd’s music sounds bright and pacy as played by the 11-strong orchestra, conducted by Dominic Ellis-Peckham. It’s chameleonic, switching between styles a little too wholeheartedly to feel entirely joined up, but with a few moments standing out. Alice gets something approaching a musical-theatre belter, beautifully sung by Madeline Robinson. The “Drink Me” Bottle’s insistent soprano acrobatics are sparkily delivered by Fleur de Bray. And Le Gateau Chocolat – a vision in green sequins as the Caterpillar, smoking his hookah like Audrey Hepburn brandishing a cigarette holder – gets a blues number that’s probably the catchiest in the show.
The eight-strong chorus of curious Victorians effect the clever scene-changes swiftly and neatly, while vocally making a big deal of it – after all, they are singing music that was designed to get the audience up and moving on to the next place. Perhaps inevitably, some of the original charm doesn’t make it from the garden into the theatre, but OHP’s Alice remains a slick and enjoyable show.
