Review: Alice in Wonderland at Shakespeare North Playhouse ***

Shakespeare North Playhouse looks once again to inspiration from a much-loved classic text for its third Christmas family show.

In 2022 the Prescot theatre presented a witty and engaging A Christmas Carol, while last year Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, a tale of friendship, courage and acceptance, brought woodland whimsy to the Cockpit stage.

Now it’s turned the spotlight on the blonde-haired, blue dress-wearing poster child of the 19th Century literary nonsense genre (its chief exponents both having local links - Edward Lear a regular visitor at Knowsley Hall, and Lewis Carroll being born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson just outside Runcorn).

Adapted by Nick Lane, who also tweaked Dickens’ festive ghost story for the theatre, this Alice in Wonderland turns out to be Lewis Carroll-meets-A Christmas Carol.

Set in modern day Prescot, harassed mum Alice (Helen Carter) is dragging her two small, resistant children around the shops in a desperate bid to recapture the festive feelings of her own childhood when she spots a flash of white fur.

Abandoning her offspring by a ‘hook a duck’ stall at the nearby Christmas fair, she sets off in pursuit and finds herself (plot spoiler) falling down a rabbit hole and back into the Wonderland she visited as a girl.

Let’s face it, nothing was ever really right in that world, and now things are even more strange and unsettled, sinister even in a distinct 1984 way, with the inhabitants of Wonderland suppressed by a new ruler who has erased memories, 'disappeared' the Queen of Hearts and rewritten the historical narrative to make Alice a figure of hate.

Will Alice come to understand what is really important in life? And can she persuade Wonderland’s oddball citizens to help her escape this dystopia and reclaim her kids?

Above: Martha Godber as the Duchess. Top: Helen Carter as Alice. Photos by Patch Dolan.

All the ingredients then are there for a colourful slice of fantastical storytelling – albeit with some dark undertones.

But as it stands the production is currently only partly realising its potential.

The five-strong cast have a herculean and at times thankless challenge to represent the many characters which inhabit Carroll/Lane’s weird world – a fact referenced in the meta-like Shakespearean prologue in which four playing cards (Milton Lopes, Martha Godber, Kelise Gordon-Harrison and understudy Tia Larsen on press night) agree to stage the ‘play’ despite losing the rest of their fellow pack.

Lopes brings his limber circus skills to the Mad Hatter who has a substantial role in the story (he also plays a nihilistic Dodo who opines that 'life is an endless succession of pointless moments') while Gordon-Harrison also showcases some energetic floor-based acrobatics.

Meanwhile Godber brings a chilly imperiousness to the totalitarian Duchess. The audience certainly enjoys booing her.

And Larsen, stepping in for Noah Olaoye, sparkles charmingly as the gallic White Rabbit who has lured Alice to the surreal, subterranean land.

Director Nathan Powell uses the small theatre-in-the-round stage, with its various exits and entrances, to help with a sense of speed and motion, characters sling-shotting on, off, around and – in the case of Lopes’ Mad Hatter – circling above the space on a suspended circus hoop.

Above: Milton Lopez. Photo by Kristian Lawrence.

Sometimes though the energy falters – and one or two scenes end up lacking focus or feeling oddly flat, including an overlong ‘Christmas dinner’ section through the looking glass after the interval. There was also an eerie hiatus on press night where, in the words of poet Edward Thomas, ‘the steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat, no one left and no one came’.

We already know nothing in Wonderland makes sense, but Lane has created a complicated, rangy and at times unnecessarily confusing plot and as well as streamlining the action more clarity in the storytelling itself would be welcome.

There’s no cluttering up sightlines with sections of set, with designer Sascha Gilmour opting instead for a handful of basic props, and there’s a lot of rearranging them in the space, complete with much clambering on and off boxes.

It makes the production feel like a bit of a travelling show, with its cast a small band of wandering players setting up wherever they find an audience. Actually, I quite like the idea of them doing that. Next stop....Whiston! Roll on Rainhill...

Christmas shows always include music. It's just the law. Here, rather like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Simon Slater's original songs are a collection of tuneful pastiches of different genres – kicked off by Carter’s walk around Prescot (possibly called Loading up for Christmas) a paean to shopping local in the vein of Penny Lane-meets-We Didn’t Start the Fire.