What has happened to Alice? Why is she so grumpy and where is her Alice band? The Alice (Elian Mai West) before us, in a grey skirt suit, is behaving like a thoroughly boring grownup. Then again, she is no longer in Wonderland: this is postwar Cardiff and she is a single mother facing up to some serious issues: a bombed out home, a husband lost to war and a free-spirited daughter, Carys (Mari Fflur), on the brink of adulthood, who wants to remain a child, and play.
All the wonder has left Alice Liddell (who has the full name of the child-friend on whom Lewis Carroll may have based his books). She is a town planner for Cardiff council, heading up an unpopular project to turn a street on which children play into a multistorey car park. But the Queen of Hearts, the tyrant ruler of Wonderland, wants a rematch to a croquet game. So the White Rabbit (Keiron Self) skitters into Alice’s life and sweeps her back into a Wonderland populated by characters of the classic tale. All are given new storylines, rather like the errant fairytale cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
Hannah McPake’s eccentric new Christmas musical conjures Carroll’s kaleidoscope of fantasy, hallucination and dream (with the help of Elin Steele’s skewed set design), adds its own heady mix of children’s games and analogies to power and tyranny, and infuses it all with intelligent humour.
There is a five-piece band on the stage with actor-musicians dressed like Wonderlanders. The songs are strong (lyrics by McPake, music by Lucy Rivers) – some are rather too wordy but there are plenty of belters. Red is a catchy power ballad sung by the Red Queen (Caitlin Lavagna). Out of My Box/Life on the Edge, by Humpty Dumpty (Oliver Wood) respun as an Elvis impersonator, is amusing. And there is an infectious number in Guess Who’s Back, sung by Alice, the Unicorn (Emily Ivana Hawkins) and the Hatter (Max James).
Carroll’s Alice stories are arguably coded searches for identity (“Who in the world am I?” says Alice, again and again). This musical incorporates that existentialism, such as in Hatter’s song Who Are You? She discover who she is – or rediscovers it – by the end.
Steele’s costumes are wondrous, while her puppets range from sweet to stunning: the dreaded Jabberwock, when it appears, is breathtaking.
This is an imaginative and playful way of reworking an old story about the importance of the imagination, and pleasure of play. You don’t stop playing because you grow up, you grow up because you stop playing, Wonderland’s characters tell Alice. It is through play that she learns to cherish her inner child. A lesson for us all.
• At Sherman theatre, Cardiff, until 3 January
