So several weeks ago now (muchos delayed post here), my best friend and I went to see the co-production from Canada’s National Ballet and Britain’s Royal Ballet of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the Four Seasons Centre (which by the way is a beautiful building and facility, cannot wait to see something there again!).
I didn’t know what at all to expect upon going to this show, but had heard great things about it, and was super thrilled due to being a devout Alice fan for what seems like my entire existence. I was eager to see a different interpretation of the book that really has never been done before. And I was not disappointed. The visual stimulation was not lacking and the scenic effects in props, costumes, landscape and architecture interpreted the magic and whimsy and Wonderland ~ wonderfully.
I also appreciated the way the story was interpreted, how Alice’s imagination and her Wonderland echoed elements of her reality. The prologue shows Alice at home playing with her sisters and with Lewis Carroll himself, while her parents are preparing for a garden party. The events surrounding the party and the guests themselves form the basis for Alice’s Wonderland imaginings. For example, Lewis Carroll turns into the White Rabbit who she follows down the rabbit hole, her mother turns into the Queen of Hearts, and so on. The only more vast departure from the children’s literary classic is the addition of a love story. Alice is not a child as in the book, but rather a teenager, though still innocent and child-like. There is a budding romance and attraction between her and the garden boy Jack, who is (to her horror and dismay) fired by her mother on the suspicion of having stolen some tarts from the garden party set-up. Conversely, in her Wonderland, Jack is transformed into the Knave of Hearts who is also under suspicion of tart theft, but by the Queen of Hearts. The love story addition was not my favorite aspect, but in the context of a dance production and ballet, sort of necessary to be cohesive and relevant.
Otherwise, once down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland, the ballet flowed in episodic scenes of choice chapters and tales from the book. My favorite episodes by far would be both the Caterpillar scene (where a Sultan-like guest at the real-life garden party transforms into a somewhat sexy belly dancing caterpillar with his multiple wives forming the sections of his caterpillar body) and the Waltz of the Flowers (just visually beautiful with multiple tutu-ed flower ballerinas reminiscent of all the reasons why ballet is so loved).
However, there was one episode that I completely did not recall from the book, but which must obviously be in there in some capacity, as it couldn’t have been made up (may be high time to re-read my beloved Alice I dare say). It is this one maddening horrific kitchen butchering episode, and it is a bloody gory mess of sadistic craziness almost. The musical accompaniment only makes it more maddeningly intense.
And here blogosphere, is where Yvonne’s Adventures at the Ballet (the second part to the title of this post) really ties in.
Similar to this gory episode of boiled meat, so was the gory episode of the boiled meat in my stomach. Without getting into the details of said goriness… as this was a weeknight showing, we rushed from work to the subway to downtown Toronto, without time to grab a lovely and civilized meal. In effect, we instead fetched some STREET MEAT – in other words MEAT OFF THE STREET. All was fine and dandy until Act II, at which point my poor insides eerily mimicked that earlier scene of massacre.
As a result, I missed the last 20 minutes of the show, the finale, and the standing o’s and encores. While all this wonderment of Wonderland was happening, I was in the washroom getting ill, to the tune of climactic orchestra music playing over the speakers.
Needless to say, I went down my own rabbit hole.
[Photos © Johan Persson, Royal Opera House]
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