Wonderland

        There are some stories that are never going to get old. Alice in Wonderland is one of them. Unfortunately, unlike other classic stories (Peter Pan, Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, just to name a few) there is no definitive stage adaptation. There have been people who have tried with varying degrees of success. Add the folks of Wonderland into the pile of those that made a near valiant effort, but didn't quite make it through the looking glass.

      It's tough not to compare this Alice to other Alice's past. I will say that, while it does cut many of Lewis Carroll's characters, they do capture the essence of the original story pretty well. Though this Alice is not the Alice we grew up with. In fact it begins with a young girl texting and listening to her Grandmother read her Alice in Wonderland.

    Chloe, the girl in question, has just moved into a new dwelling place as a result of her parents "Marital Problems". We don't hear much about these problems, what they are, how they came about, we just have to trust that they are there, which is fine in a sense, except that it's important for us to know as to how these characters are relating to each other.

    The story pushes onward introducing us to Alice, who is a teacher who longs to be a writer, and apparently has very little time for her family, which may or may not be part of the marital problems, though we get the feeling from the way Alice speaks of her husband that it's all his fault. Alice bumps her head taking the service elevator (why is she taking the service elevator and not the regular people elevator? I couldn't tell you, and neither do the book writers), and falls asleep after a confrontation with her daughter and mother in law. Why is her mother in law at the house that she just moved into to get away from her son? Another interesting and unanswered question. Nevertheless, Alice falls asleep and who should appear but the white rabbit, leading Alice back to the service elevator in question, and incidentally on to Wonderland.

    The rest of the story is filled with the same time of poor book writing, bad jokes, and underdeveloped characters. The music is quite good, very catchy, but the lyrics are mostly terrible. The sad thing is that it could have been quite good if there was somebody on board who new how to structure a musical.

    Performances are mostly good. Janet Dacal is endearing and likable as Alice. Carly Rose Sonnenclar is adorable and never precocious as Chloe.  Karen Mason and Kate Shindle do their best to make crap sparkle. Darren Ritchie does what is needed as The White Knight, and you just spend the whole time feeling sorry for Jose Llanna.

   The set and costumes are lovely, so the projections get to be a bit trippy at times, and there are some very poorly staged moments, like the act I finale for instance. Wonderland is closing on Sunday May 15th. It is a wasted opportunity because there IS something there, it's just not quite fully developed yet.