At the Cresent Theatre
Stage2 ‘Alice’s Adventures in Www.land’
Devised by Stage2 using the story of the original book, the director, Lucy Bailey-Wright, goes to great pains to explain that although the characters and story in this production, mimic that of Lewis Carroll’s original text of Alice in Wonderland, all the characters in their play are real children, simply using character names as online alias’s.
To most of those above a certain age, which includes your reviewer, who use their computer basically as a word processor, and the internet as a quick and easy way to send messages, a means of sourcing information or buying things cheaper than in the shops, the world of social media is totally foreign to them. Thanks to whoever produced the programme for including a list of‘ ‘Teenage/Internet Speak’ or I for one, would have been totally lost – LOL!
The audience entered to see 15 year old Alice, laying on her bed in her room reading; she was bored with reading books with no pictures and doing homework, and has created a wonderland of her own via her laptop. We followed Alice as she clicked from site to site encountering the White Rabbit, the Duchess, the King and Queen of Hearts and many other characters from Alice in Wonderland, as she set out on her epic adventure through online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
As is normal for Stage2 a huge cast of 54 (including the chorus) was involved, with almost as many backstage and front of house this was another all encompassing production.
With Alice’s bedroom recessed at the back of the flat stage space in the Studio Theatre, five pieces of rostra decorated with various common media symbols, a large projection screen above the bedroom and two video screens either side was the setting. This worked very well with such a large cast, and the projection screen was certainly helpful when ‘tweets’ were being sent and during the musical number towards the end. This was most impressive with the whole cast involved in such a small area, it was choreographed and performed to perfection.
Some notable performances came from Georgia Homer as Alice, Tom Butler as Cheshire Cat, Leah Martindale as Caterpillar, Annabelle Quirin as March Hare, George Bandy as Mock Turtle and Joshua Gordon as Griffin, however, the whole cast are to be congratulated as they all played their part.
I don’t claim to ‘totes’ get all that was going on, but this was a competent piece of theatre which certainly made you think.
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