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Indeed, there were many moments when I expected characters to warble. Alas, they did not, even though singing would have been an ideal complement to the razzle-dazzle of the performance. A lot of unexciting choreography is cleverly concealed by John Driscoll’s and Gemma Carrington’s breathtaking projections, as well as by Bob Crowley’s superb designs, Toby Olié’s beguiling puppetry, Natasha Katz’s powerful lighting, and Simon Russell Beale’s presence as a great panto-like Duchess.
Although Wheeldon conceived interesting thematic patterns for his protagonists, he did not weave them together as he has done with his successful non-narrative works. Alice, therefore, looks chaotically pieced together, and the characters are reduced to stock types, whose antics, in the long run, become tiresome. This is a pity for there are some good ideas, like the tapping Tim Burton-esque Mad Hatter (a spirited Steven McRae) and even some screwball humour, as with the parody of the Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty performed by the Queen of Hearts — an irresistible and pyrotechnically over-the-top Zenaida Yanowsky.
Alas, these isolated instances do not compensate for the general lack of choreographic inventiveness that underscores the two impossibly long acts. The role of Alice is the one that suffers most from unmemorable ideas, even though on the opening night Lauren Cuthbertson danced to perfection and compensated for the feeble choreography with great silent acting.
Aided by playwright Nicholas Wright, Wheeldon has tried to add an extra narrative dimension to the story. Unfortunately, the budding love between Alice Liddell and the dashing gardener Jack — a dazzling, though poorly used Sergei Polunin — gets lost amid the coils of a libretto that tries to pack in every possible episode from the original book.
As soon as the curtain goes up, viewers are introduced to the ‘human’ version of the fantastic characters, depicted either as members of the Liddell household, or as friends of the family. Unfortunately, this idea is too much of a dramatic and choreographic cliché to make an impact — it characterised the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz and is used in hundreds of contemporary readings of the ubiquitous Nutcracker. The scene is also too long and convoluted, and signals the long-windedness of things to come. A more succinct version would have provided a better counterpoint to the shorter and more flippant ending, in which a modern-day Alice enjoys freedom from the strict Victorian morals with her Jack-lookalike boyfriend.
This is not the first time a respected dance-maker has had a go at Alice, and it is not the first time that things have not gone as planned either. Yet of the many balletic versions I have had the fortune and misfortune to see, this is the sole one that I think has the potential to become a truly effective theatrical adaptation of Carroll’s masterwork. Whether its authors will be willing to engage in serious and abundant pruning, it is difficult to say. Indeed, radical streamlining is badly needed, even though this might mean changing some of Joby Talbot’s superb score, arguably the best new ballet music I have heard in years.
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Also by Giannandrea Poesio
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