Paul T Davies reviews Mike Kenny's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland at the Mercury Theatre Colchester.
Alice in Wonderland Mercury Theatre, Colchester.
3 August 2022
3 Stars
Lewis Carrol’s classic opium-driven tale has managed to survive into the Twenty-First Century in many forms and reworkings, and Mike Kenny’s adaptation sets the tale on the morning of Alice’s very important exam. It’s a fever dream triggered by exam anxiety, and the production boasts an excellent ensemble and creative team that take us on the journey. They’ve been down their own rabbit hole a bit, with Beth Mabin stepping in with a few days’ notice to replace an indisposed actor.
There were no fears for her on opening night, she is a perfect Alice, enquiring and curious. The company of actor/musicians are excellent, Tom Moores a wonderful White Rabbit, with great comic timing and engagement with the audience, and I loved Rosalind Ford’s Duchess, especially her Act One closing number about babies, which will give you an earworm for the interval! Natasha Karp is a fearsome Queen of Hearts and Jamie Noar and Loris Scarpa have a great turn as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The real star of the show is the inventiveness of the staging, including a wonderful caterpillar sequence, delightful flamingos and hedgehogs for croquet, well done to designer Anisha Fields and her team. At times it looks like a computer game, and others like a 1980s children’s TV programme. I also really enjoyed that the whole company become Alice at one point, it’s as if Jane Horricks has been cloned and they’ve started to swarm!
The weakest element, for me, is the material itself. The first half is joyous and fast-moving, but this is a plotless story and the energy fades in the second half. This is not the fault of the company, it’s just unclear who Kenny’s adaptation is aimed at. If it’s children sitting GCSE’s they may be too cool for this, and it may be not magical enough for younger viewers. Alice’s search for her identity also struggles to ring true, it feels added on for contemporary relevance. Of course, we don’t know at what level the production was at before Covid struck, and the show needs to run in to hit the right pace.
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Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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