It seems like a disaster waiting to happen, giving a huge cast a tiny budget and a drab church to perform in. Still, one would hope that because Alice in Wonderland has already been done so much, anyone putting it on now would feel an obligation to do something interesting with it.
No such luck. It seems as though The Flying High Theatre Company’s only preparation for getting up on stage and bastardizing a much loved book was to stick pipe cleaners onto their hairbands. Even the babies weren’t impressed. After half an hour of brave watching, a clever boy in a nappy began to wail his displeasure giving his lucky parents a get out of jail free card – the three of them pelted for the door, leaving the rest of us sunk in jealous despair.
It should not be so difficult to please children with Alice in Wonderland. All that is needed is to be able to identify who is who and hear the lines. However the costumes were so terrible that no one could identify who the girl in the white capris mingling with the kids was - she turned out to be the White Rabbit. The mingling was saddeningly half-hearted considering the size of the cast – if you’re going to interact, then get more people out there and actually leave an impression!
Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee stumbled over their lines. They did not compensate for this with anything that was interesting physically – no lovable bumbling, no rolling on the floor bickering. They just stood there, lemon shaped, trying to remember if they had to say ‘contrariwise’ or ‘nohow’.
The rest of the acting was similarly clumsy, perhaps with the exception of the leftmost daisy in the flower garden scene - of course her ability was entirely irrelevant wedged as she was between copious other other less gifted flowers who introduced themselves turn, by turn, by turn, by turn, by turn….
