Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (The Royal Ballet)
Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon
Live screening – 16 Dec 14
When Christmas approaches, ballet companies across the country often choose to present The Nutcracker in all its glittering and festive splendour, but this year the Royal Ballet deterred from tradition with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a refreshing and inspired production guaranteed to become a firm favourite. Overflowing with clever and quirky interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s imaginative world, this new ballet takes “adaptation” to a whole new level.
Despite some slight deviations from the traditional storyline, such as a crossover between the characters from Alice’s dream and her reality, the ballet is a faithful reworking of Carroll’s literary creation. Opening with an 1862 garden party that introduced the characters (including Carroll himself), the production quickly moved into the more bizarre world of Wonderland, incorporating the use of projections and puppetry to convey the curious creatures Alice (danced by Sarah Lamb) encounters. However, in an unexpected twist, the ballet concluded with Alice awakening in 2014, having fallen asleep reading Carroll’s book.
The ingenious creativity in the presentation of the characters themselves is an element that cannot be overlooked in a review of this ballet, and in fact was a highlight throughout the entire show. The Mad Hatter (Steven McRae) became the Mad Tapper, beating out frenzied rhythms on his miniature stage made of a tea party table. The Caterpillar (Eric Underwood) took the form of a rajah, his undulating performance concluding with eight extra dancers to create a many-legged effect. Similarly, the Cheshire Cat utilised multiple dancers along with the art of puppetry, allowing the Cat’s head, feet and tail to mysteriously float away in numerous directions. Even the usually unassuming White Rabbit (Alexander Campbell) had a unique character twist in his development into Alice’s guide and protector.
However, it was the Queen of Hearts (danced superbly by Zenaida Yanowsky) who ultimately stole the show in Act III. The highlight of her performance was undoubtedly the parody of the famous Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty, traditionally danced by the Princess Aurora and four suitors in a demonstration of perfect balance and poise. In Alice, the Queen performed what can only be called a “Tart Adagio”, in which jam tarts took the place of roses and her reluctant cohort of dancers unintentionally ruined her attempt at a graceful routine. Yanowsky’s dance ability is clearly beyond outstanding in order to perform this comical spoof of a notoriously difficult piece of ballet repertoire.
Nevertheless, the production still contained plenty of classical ballet content to please the more traditional fans. In a garden scene, dancers swirled in a kaleidoscopic waltz of colour reminiscent of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, and various pas de deux between Alice and the Knave of Hearts (Federico Bonelli) interspersed the storytelling with moments of innocent delight and understated elegance. These aspects, combined with Joby Talbot’s truly magical clockwork score, prevent the ballet from descending into a chaotic overload of comical characterisation. Ultimately, this is a production that manages to find the subtle balance between the beautiful and the excessive, and the classic and the curious.
All the World's a Stage 