Brighton Year-Round 2025

Alice in Wonderland

Brighton Little Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, classical, Comedy, Costume, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Brighton Little Theatre

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Can there really be two Red Queens? And can you find your own name on an execution list? Step into this special version of Lewis Carroll’s twinned classics from 1865 and 1871: they’re adapted here and cleverly segued into each other by Brainerd Duffield’s 1978 Alice in Wonderland. Directed by Tina Sitko with assistance from Nettie Sheridan, choreographed by Frankie Knight it plays till December 20.

It’s up there with the best of BLT’s seasonal wonders, and its dizzying spectacle means that though maybe a child mightn’t understand it more than the books themselves, they’ll be dazzled with scene after scene, image after image, helmed as ever by that stage magician Steven Adams (off with his head says the List). And if you know it, it’s all there, all making the perfect nonsense: that’s logic.

Oh in case you’re wondering, Brainerd Duffield isn’t an anagram of brainy nerd, as Carroll’s (and I think Duffield’s)  puns would immediately have you believe. An American actor and playwright, Duffield really lived from 1917-79, so this is one of his last works. He pops up on old films too.

Alice (Polly Jones) nods outside her large house on a hot summer’s day. She comes to, to see a giant White Rabbit (Laurits Bjerrum, rendering an elegance of fright) panic by pulling out his watch, terrified he’ll be late, for the Duchess and head-chopping Red Queen of Hearts (Frankie Knight again with her “Off with his head!” She’s even heard offstage; Chloe McEwan’s Executioner with her levelling axe is never far off). Following him she falls down a massive burrow (the visuals skid by in the first of a kaleidoscopic tour). And we’re in Wonderland. A world of um chopped logic and puns, of donnish drollery and illogic brilliantly stood on its head like Father William: and Wordsworth’s verse here and other poems are parodied mercilessly; so much so the originals are quite obliterated.

Its 90 minutes of playing time are bisected by an interval 60/30, as its fourteen scenes favour the first book, Alice in Wonderland. However this cleverly sets the scenes with Looking Glass chess-squares mentioned early on, for Alice to jump seamlessly into her Adventures in the Looking Glass. That happens just after the interval. Aided by Beverley Grover’s lighting, Adams’ hard-working set with video projections with curtains and costumes, means psychedelic images are swept away with minimum stage business. Special shout out to Tom Williams and Allison Williams for scenic design painting, and special props, aided by the cast.

There’s inadequate superlatives for the quality of individual backdrops invoking Dali, Blake, Samuel Palmer, a splash of Pre-Raphaelitism, 1960s psychedelia – and the one realist touch of a grand house photograph for the waking world. The costumes do the rest, and they’re spectacular. With seven designers equally responsible, I can only refer to the bottom of this review, and make-up led by Patti Griffiths.

The music’s enchanting too, with Sitko joined by Michael James and Jack West to produce some entrancing numbers, none more so than the Mock Turtle’s Song, straight out of Sullivan and Italianate parlour songs. There’s so much more, particularly for Alice herself to sing. The tricky ”How doth the little crocodile” is a small miracle of chromatic off-harmony and Jones delivers every time. Rosalind Caldwell’s anxious Gryphon (again striking red-yellow costume) is a kind of tremulous double-act with West, dancing the Lobster Quadrille to Alice’s dodgy rendition of a favourite verse (which really has been obliterated by Carroll’s version). Which is capped by West’s own rendition as the greenish Mock Turtle. Another triumph of costumery and make-up, West’s exquisite and the highpoint musically of the first half, perhaps of the show.

After the roaring Knight, magnificently Wagnerian throughout, with a touch of mischief, one exceptional double performance comes with Lily McCaffery’s profoundly nervous Mouse: particularly as Alice is so tactless about Dinah her cat. She later reappears as Humpty Dumpty massively orotund and perched on a wall, quizzical and slightly petulant.

Though Esme Bird, Ingrid Mort, Oliver Hickling, Josie Durand and Suzanne Heritage take Card parts and Fish (Hickling) and Frog (Heritage) Footmen, they sometimes get a chance to shine. Durand’s a cross Cook scattering pepper. I’d have enjoyed Mort’s Cheshire Cat more had she been embodied, though here she’s ingeniously projected onto a tree, vanishing and reappearing like the original Cheshire.  Heritage goes on to become the exhortative Red Queen, running to keep still. Freya Pedersen’s querulous Dodo is followed by Daniel Carr’s superb hipster Caterpillar, with a singular costume: about eight turquoise hands and a glow-worm-like light. Carr’s completely encased. It might take the prize but there’s so much to come.

Leigh Ward’s Duchess who as it were twinkles all through, even has a last, louche word. But even the Duchess is terrified of the Queen of Hearts and her unilateral invitations to play croquet with writhing flamingos (exquisitely rendered). Luckily Frida Jensen’s flaky white Queen, a cannier inhabiter of the looking-glass world than most (a complement to the Red Queen, always running to keep still) shows Alice how memory is experienced forwards. Her fey and faux-fragile faffiness is a delight.

Before that though comes the great set piece of the Tea Party, with table and vast amounts of chinaware against a red backdrop. It’s deftly moved on and off behind curtains. But its sheer impact with backdrop is one of the great moments of this production, matched by acting. With Myles Locke’s fantastical March Hare and Joseph Bentley’s surreal peacock Mad Hatter primping every question, their hat garb alone’s worth the price of the entrance ticket (10/6 to you, and explain shillings afterwards). They’re blessed with Robyn Ives’ somnolently-challenged Dormouse, flopping every which way.

In the court scene, the cast are interrupted by Will Rosander’s light-fingered Knave of Hearts and the rules-based-order-prone King of Hearts Stephen Evans: whose stentorian voice almost persuades you he can turn his wife’s rage through court procedure.

The second act’s great set-piece apart from Humpty-Dumpty is Tonie Ow’s and Hannah Sumner’s Tweedledee and Tweedledum. A deliciously camp affair, coded for adults and fun for children, their mocking and logical parodies all “no-how” and “that’s logic” are a terrific double-act. They bring the house down with “sit down” a refrain to the impatient Alice as they sing ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ and four Oysters appear (Mort, Carr, Rosander, McEwan, looking almost human again). You feel it ought to be sung in certain night-clubs.

Throughout this Jones manages to draw attention to Alice’s plight with humour, some genuine moments of sheer panic and frustration; and the alights move of the head or expression meaning we see things through her kaleidoscope eyes as well as our own.

There’s still that trial though and apotheosis. Fluidity and mood-switch are seamless, sometimes miraculous, the huge cast deftly change when necessary. In such a headlong adaptation the BLT company pace faithfully, it mightn’t be possible to bring out every subtlety; but many of this 23-strong cast triumph in this cavalcade of Carroll. What was he on? Imagination, perhaps. There’s nothing madder than a mathematician thrown out of his logic’s whimsy. It’s a must-see and pretty outstanding.

Stage Manager Claire Prater, Set Painting Tom Williams, Set Construction The Cast & Crew,

Make-Up Design/Wigs Patti Griffiths, Make-Up Evie McGuire Rosa Alempour.

Lighting and Sound Operation Steven Adams, Tina Sitko.

Vocal Coaching Anita Garai, Joanna Ackroyd

Costume Design & Creation Myles Locke, Christine Fox, Felicity Clements, Ann Atkins, Allison Williams, Chris de La Nougerede, Colin Rogers-Marsh, Props Glenys Stuart

Filming Joseph Bentley Ingrid Mort, Photography Miles Davies.

Published December 16, 2025December 16, 2025 by Simon Jenner