ALICE IN WONDERLAND - Bonny Lythgoe & Broadway Haus Productions

 

Eowyn Turner as Alice in "Alice in Wonderland"

Co-Produced by Nate Bertone and Anthony Street,

Adapted and Directed by Penny Farrow – Designed and co – directed by Nate Bertone

Costume Design by Ethan Walker- Music by Evan Jolly

Canberra Theatre Centre 8^th January 2024 – Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Simon Burvell-Holmes as the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland"

Although she is best known as a judge of the original Australian reality television series “So You Think You Can Dance”, Producer Bonnie Lythgoe has since 2014 been delighting children and adults around Australia with her spectacular traditional pantomimes often starring well known stage and television personalities of the calibre of Todd McKenney, Rhonda Burchmore, Richard Reid, Lucy Durack and Magda Szubanski.

However her choice for the 2024 tour is an enchanting version of the Lewis Carroll classic, “Alice in Wonderland” for which she eschews celebrity casting in favour of accomplished multi-talented character-actors equipped with the talents necessary to bring Penny Farrow’s brilliantly conceived version of this classic tale to life.

For her version of this well-loved tale, writer/ director, Farrow has drawn on characters, dialogue and poems from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”, “The Hunting of the Snark” and other of Carrol’s writings to create a magical production which joyously captures Carroll’s playful delight in exploiting the quirks of the English language.

Farrow’s production commences with the characters speaking Jabberwocky, a language which no doubt confused her young audience, and many of those considerably older. But as the audience becomes familiar with the parade of quirky characters who take Alice on her wonderful journey down the rabbit-hole, Jabberwocky soon becomes perfectly normal.

Alice (Eowyn Turner) becomes acquainted with Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Justine Anderson & Matilda Simmons)

Eight excellent actors share umpteen roles together with a multitude of adorable puppets, which move through the story so quickly that it feels like a cast of thousands. Eowyn Turner is a perfectly well-mannered  Alice scampering over giant toad-stools with exactly  the correct degree of  delightful insouciance and precocious curiosity to keep the audience on her side as she challenges the gleeful pomposity of Simon Burvell-Holmes’ over-bearing Queen of Hearts, the argumentative silliness of Justine Anderson and Matilda Simmons’ Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, and the wondrously  costumed caterpillar of Anthony Craig whose  transformation into a beautiful butterfly drew spontaneous applause from the captivated audience. 

Anthony Craig as the Caterpillar

The production values through-out are quite wonderful with Ethan Walker providing  multiple story-book costumes for the characters who inhabit Nate Bertone’s magically  lit settings which enable the succession of gasp-inducing special effects creating the succession of classic scenes. The Mad-hatter’s tea party;  the crazy  croquet game played with flamingos and hedgehogs; the simple, but very effective shrinking of Alice, the marvellous grinning Cheshire Cat and the overly-anxious white rabbit are all there, enhanced by a delightfully evocative musical score by Evan Jolly.

This wonderfully theatrical production is guaranteed to send young readers scurrying to their libraries to obtain the source material and rediscover the many captivating characters emanating from Lewis Carroll’s fertile imagination. It is touring widely, so when it comes your way don’t miss it.

                                                              Images by Robert Cato

This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au