AVANT ALICE (Thornhill Theatre Space)****

   

By Megan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwH3OFeoeNw

Available until: Unknown

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story that has been adapted lots of times in lockdown and it has been really interesting to see all the different ways the story has been presented. It’s a story a lot of people really identify with at the moment. The whole idea of being in a new world where everything seems slightly off is one most of us can relate to.

Avant Alice is one of my favourite adaptions. It sticks to the story we know but at the same time, it looks at it from new angles. In the book, Alice is quite a conventional girl who literally falls into a new world and it seems like an accident – though there are other ways of interpreting the story. Avant Alice focuses more on the idea that Alice hasn’t gone into the world accidentally. It is something she really needs.

The play is presented on Zoom and it is written and directed by Mary Eliza Hendricks. It is described as a coming of age story and it works really well. I don’t think I’ll come of age for a long time (though neither will Alice, it sounds like she is in the fifth grade so she is probably ten or eleven so she’s the same age as me) but one thing I really identified with which I hadn’t noticed when I read the book is that sometimes Alice is too tall and sometimes she is too small. I have obviously never literally grown and shrunk in the same way Alice has but I can be in one place and feel quite grown-up, then I’ll go somewhere else and I feel very little and young. It isn’t even about the place – it is something that can change quite quickly and the reason for the change can be as small and as unimportant as ‘something I ate’ but it can change the way I feel completely.

The book does seem a bit like Alice goes through a series of adventures like the title of the book says (a lot of people call it Alice in Wonderland but that is not Lewis Carroll’s title) but this play really shows how she learns new things from each adventure and also uses the knowledge she has already and that’s important because I don’t think Alice in this version of the story is very confident so she really needs her adventures. Just like we needed our adventures when we were in lockdown, even if we were in the same place the whole time and a lot of our adventures weren’t actually real.

I really like the way the play is directed because it shows us new things in the story but it doesn’t try to twist the story so far away from the original that we have to translate the story back into Alice as we watch it. This works really well because it shows just how much can be done on Zoom and that you don’t necessarily need to think of clever ways of making things work on Zoom because it all works already. Tea parties, pools of tears, talking playing cards – they can all be done on Zoom. I love the music and the opening credits and the way it’s fun but really respectful to the story. I don’t know if it really pushes the boundaries. Maybe it’s more that it shows you the boundaries aren’t where we all thought they were. 

There are so many great performances. Destinee Johnson is a convincing, natural and really likeable Alice who we really sympathise with. Shelby Grace isn’t a conventional Hatter (he’s never called the Mad Hatter in the book, though he is a hatter and he is mad) but her interpretation really works well and she has a great costume. Laurel Jolgren makes a really nice contrast between the White Rabbit and the March Hare. It is really interesting to see them played by the same actor when they are similar animals. Gigi Ross doesn’t just give the Cheshire Cat a great smile – she has lovely feline movement too. Katie Bolling makes a very strong impression as the King of Hearts, even next to Haleigh Tilley’s scary Queen.

Avant Alice is a lot of fun and it manages to be original and faithful to the book which is very clever.