We are sitting in a wooded dell, ranged on felled tree trunks around a small clearing. The summer’s evening is warm; fairy lights in bunting twinkle between branches. Four children arrive, with their stomping, snapping, camping-trip leader, Miss Dodgson. “Where are we?” she barks. One of the children, Lewis, consults a map: “Wonderland.” Dodgson snatches it from him: “Unfold it, silly! Now see what it says – Water on Blanding!” As it turns out, of course, Lewis is right. We are all in a wonderland of sorts – the make-believe world created by the Dukes theatre company in Williamson Park.
Andrew Pollard’s script reframes Lewis Carroll’s 1865 story as a quest. When Lewis is snatched by the vicious and voracious Jabberwock, Alice sets out to rescue her fellow camper. Encounters along the way provide the “weapons” she will need: a rattle from a pair of warring baby twins; pepper from the Duchess’s kitchen; tea leaves from the Mad Hatter’s party. As she goes, Alice learns to recognise her faults, stand up for what is right, and to answer the question Lewis sings before he is abducted: “How do you say sorry?” (one of the catchy numbers composed by musical director, Steven Markwick).
Pollard’s story has a logic and a moral purpose alien to the original. If the adaptation comes across to me as pleasant but pedestrian, to the children running up and down the paths it is thrilling to follow the talkative White Rabbit through the park, spying clues along the way: Lewis’s broken ukulele; ginormous claw marks on a tree trunk; a giant, curly turd (Jessica Curtis, designs).
Most hair-raising moment? The jabberwock’s arrival anticipated by roaring noises through breeze-danced branches (Kate Harvey’s sound design). An indefatigable ensemble (special mention to Eve Pereira’s Alice and Helen Longworth’s Red Queen) delivers director Kirstie Davies’s production to child-delighting effect, as the sun sets red and the last light fades, beyond the park, over Morecambe Bay.
