Wonderland
There’s an updated, blockbuster version of Alice
in Wonderland on its way to Broadway, but this charming, unassuming
period piece for two actors and a pianist may steal some of its
thunder.
to be everywhere this festival, with music by Susannah Pearse, who’s totally
invisible.
She must have gone down the rabbit hole; let’s hope it
wasn’t a plug hole. Anyway, Brandreth and Pearse have devised a poignant
encounter between Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) in his Oxford rooms with
Isa Bowman, the actress who first played Alice Liddell on stage, and who now
wants to move on.
It’s a true story, and it’s beautifully played in Iqbal
Khan’s well-organised production by Michael Maloney as Charles and Flora
Spencer-Longhurst as Isa, reviving her performance as Alice one last time. Nice
songs, too, some of them set to Carroll’s own imperishably nonsensical
lyrics. Will you, won’t you, join
the dance?
