FringeReview UK 2025
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Orange Tree Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Children's Theatre, classical, Comedy, Contemporary, Family, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, New Writing, Puppetry, Surrealism, Theatre
Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Written for the Orange Tree Young Company who brought a memorable Treasure Island last December, Chinonyerem Odimba’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland inspired by Lewis Carroll, directed by Matt Hassall runs at the Orange Tree till December 22.
This is a virtuoso production like no other you’ll see in one twice as big with a stage twenty times as huge.
Review
There’s a reason one character down a rabbit hole quips “blah blah blah” – blink and you’ll miss the witty Greta Thunberg reference. This uber-bright Alice is modern, and she’s a climate bore to her classmates, whom she can’t relate to. But things go differently on a school adventure trip Alice never wanted to be on. Written for the Orange Tree’s Young Company who brought a memorable Treasure Island last December, Chinonyerem Odimba’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland inspired by Lewis Carroll, directed by Matt Hassall runs at the Orange Tree till December 22. This is just one corner of the triumph Tom Littler and Julie Weston have brought to the Orange Tree.
As with some adaptations, this hinges together both Wonderland and Looking Glass, truncating the latter even more than usual. Scheduled for two hours, this runs nearer two-hours-fifteen and it’s still over too soon.
Hassall and Odimba conjure a storytelling relatable and surreal, though not insistent. So greater impact comes from 18 actors aged 18-25; and from Isabella Van Braeckel’s fantastical set and costume designs. Those are riven by Will Reynolds’ lighting – shot through with psychedelic-tinged colours. And tinctured with Ellie Isherwood’s sound design: which has a thing for Rossini’s William Tell overture thrubbing in all sorts of guises. Luckily Paula James’s songs (she’s also musical director) punctuate with entrancing arrangements. This cast can certainly sing.
The detail and wonder conjured by every frame of this production is the most dazzling I’ve seen even in this space. Alice, in this performance played with an anxious-seeming aplomb by Eithne Garricks (alternating with LeeAnn Sule), feels alienated from classmates and wants to go home. Hers is an enormously engaging performance and rivets attention. Worried teachers Mrs Mortimer (Nadia Sweeney, later a hieratic Griffin) and Mr Pollard (Ioan Oosthuizen, later a put-upon King of Hearts) confer.
Alice though ventures out into the frozen night, in contrast to the original’s summer. Here a surprising number of original characters are kept, though the Mock Turtle is ingeniously displaced from one story into the next. It’s where Izzie Mayhew-Smith, first actor on the scene grabbing an outsize pocket-watch, induces Alice down that rabbit hole; whilst providing an object lesson in time-deprivation anxiety as White Rabbit. There’s fun with shrink-drinks, a puppet-sized Alice and this is where the magic really starts. As Alice shrinks (Reynolds’ lighting induces vertigo) two of her giant tears fall to earth – Liam Francis’ movement direction throughout makes a ballet of Alice’s Adventures. When Alice is made a giantess, a double of her spectacles is attached to her like huge stilts.
But that’s nothing compared to two other Alices – fractioned off from Alice like the Sub-divided Self. Layla Shurmer’s anxious, emotionally more present Alice #2 is counterpointed by Avani Zarine’s intellectually haughty, dismissive Alice #3. She’s smart-Alice with all the answers, perhaps closest to the classical Alice, who might just have been insufferable.
The costume involving lights for Caterpillar (a gnomic JJJ Chilton) adds cast members to its writhing charm. Though this Alice isn’t as sharply-spoken as the original, she finds herself challenged in her weak spots. Tactless to the benign but straight-talking Mouse (Phoebe Sule), this Alice develops empathy through confrontations with (perhaps) analogues of her classmates. If briefly, in Wonderland’s whacky environment. Japhia Papa Marfo’s Cheshire Cat looming but benign, is easily the chillest character, peeping through lime-green shades.
Megan Dilby’s Mad Hatter with a mad aria and stratospheric hat, is one highpoint of the Tea Party scene, where Rosie Glynn’s March Hare (she’s also a sneezy Cook) and Ferah Jennela’s Dormouse (a Possum in the Caucus Race) are a delight in a crowded tea party where White Rabbit drops by. Alice really doesn’t find room. Though despite zany stand-offs and Alice’s increasing hunger-pangs, this is more glorious spectacle than acerbically funny. There’s few biting exchanges and riddles are soft-edged. It’s a cuddly Act One finale till Alice plunges into her second dream.
The rub is that spectacle and acting aren’t matched by weirdness: they’re a little normative. Alice’s maladjustment is sometimes tackled without preaching but occasionally clunks. Like the 2015 reincarnation of Oliver Postgate’s Clangers, lent moral tie-ups the original never had. It’s this moralising Carroll subverted: the original is gloriously free from advice to the young. It’s why it’s survived. Those of school age seeing this (and it’s targeted at them) might feel the same.
Two characters though certainly do impact. Agnes Halladay’s terrifically unhinged Queen of Hearts is like Miranda Richardson’s Blackadder Elizabeth I. And if not deranged, looks blissfully near it. Odimba does something rapt with the Alices and Queen of Hearts latterly too; it’s truly moving and caps the production. Indeed the trial scene is memorably staged. That includes nicely-managed audience participation as jurors. Another rounded character is long-delayed Mock Turtle: Jessica Millson’s woebegone plastic-in-sea warning-songs. Even Alice sees this takes self-delighting melancholy a bit far. Exchanges between Millson and Garricks are touching and exploratory.
There’s actors who make brief vivid impressions. Tanya Kovatchka’s Duchess in black-and-white almost like a Bridget Riley painting, and Two. She’s part of a posse of cards who shrink-rose their way through the opening of Act Two when Halladay arrives. Kovatchka’s joined by Jumoké Sowole’s Five (and Dodo) and Lizzie O’Reilly’s Seven (and Eaglet). Luckless Kovatchka also trembles in Court, as Duchess.
This is a heart-warming virtuoso production like no other you’ll see in one twice as big with a stage twenty times as huge. Mild caveats aside, it allows each of us to imagine how weird and antinomian the world of Alice is. Or as Wallace Stevens might put it, where she might find herself more truly and more strange.
Associate Musical Director Tom Attwood, Associate Director Madi Mahoney, Movement Director Liam Francis, Voice Coach Shereen Ibrahim.
Costume Supervisor Beth Quarter Buncall, Assistant Costumer Supervisor Sorcha Ni Fhloinn, Costume Trainees Abbie Simcock Iris Towers
Costume Supervisor, Ciéranne Kennedy-Bell Hair & Make-Up Consultant Holly Crewe.
Stage Manager Nell Thomas, ASM Callum Mack.
Production Manager Sean Laing, CSM Jade Gooch, Production & Technical Director Phil Bell, Production Technician Andy Owen Cook, Production Technician Priya Virdee.
