The Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon that premiered in 2011, opens not with the story contained within Lewis Carroll’s book, but with a fictionalized scene of how it was written. Against the backdrop of Oxford, the Liddell family hosts a garden party. After Alice’s love interest is kicked out, Carroll attempts to console her by snapping a photo (indeed, the real Carroll did photograph many children, including the real-life Alice Liddell). The camera flashes onstage, and everyone freezes as Carroll emerges from beneath the camera cloth, only now appearing as the White Rabbit. Alice follows him down the rabbit hole, and so do we: a screen onstage with a swirling vortex provides audience members with a pleasantly dizzying sensation that is enhanced by Joby Talbot’s brilliant score, which is mystifying, atmospheric, and appropriately anxiety-inducing.
The remainder of Act I is an advertisement for the theater’s prop and special-effects team, rather than a ballet. Now following Carroll’s narrative, Alice—danced on June 17 by Anna Rose O’Sullivan—appears to change size, becoming trapped in a tiny-looking cube. She cries so heavily that a “pool” forms, attracting a variety of animals who “swim” (meaning they wave their arms around as their legs are obscured by “waves”) and then participate in a “caucus race,” during which the choreography can be summarized as prancing and slow-motion walking. In the countryside, Alice meets the Frog, whose angular, nontraditional leaps very accurately capture the amphibian’s springiness. She then enters the cottage of the knife-wielding Butcher, where the characters bounce around and engage in frantic chases rather than dancing, save for a few impressive jumps by the men. Alice escapes and rejoins the White Rabbit. Soon after, her love interest—the Knave, danced by Matthew Ball (replacing an injured William Bracewell)—dashes across the stage with a plate of tarts as he is pursued by the Queen’s soldiers. Alice and the Knave share an endearingly whimsical, albeit rather brief, pas de deux that concludes with Alice twirling blindfolded as the Knave runs away without being followed.
The select moments in Act I during which Wheeldon is less concerned with the special effects and he indulges the audience with dancing, rather than characters doing pantomime-like steps, are lovely. Somewhat regrettably, the same fault persists through Act II, with a massive Cheshire Cat puppet that is intriguing for only about thirty seconds of the four or so minutes. The gimmicks don’t end, and the Mad Hatter—wearing tap shoes—appears for a tea party that is dynamic yet lacking the absurdity so profound in both Carroll’s book and Walt Disney’s 1951 cartoon; Wheeldon’s Alice is having fun, whereas Carroll’s Alice was frustrated, even “offended.” Ultimately, the scene is underwhelming when the tea party is meant to be overwhelming. Then, the renowned ballerinas do some ballet: Alice performs a solo that is appropriately girly and delicate, followed by the groovy Caterpillar and his body of sparkly ballerina legs strutting behind him in bedazzled pointe shoes. After eating a presumably hallucinogenic mushroom, Alice finds herself waltzing among flowers in the garden, a (slightly too long) dance echoing the “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker with its lightness and flow.
Everything left desired during Acts I and II is found in Act III, in which Wheeldon balances humor and intricate dancing. Three panicked gardeners show off lively petite allegro as they attempt to paint the white roses red, then cower before the Queen of Hearts, performed excellently by Mayara Magri (originally scheduled to be Natalia Osipova). The Queen dances a satirized version of the “Rose Adagio” from Sleeping Beauty, with a sufficient amount of technical steps to let Magri’s talent shine, yet just enough absurdity—a cartwheel, a split, a face plant—that the dance is funny. During the perfectly weird croquet game, ballerinas-turned-flamingos do some yoga-like poses with their expectedly bendy limbs. The main characters (the Frog, the Butcher, the Mad Hatter, and so on) make brief appearances, and their musical themes are all expertly interwoven by the composer. The charming pas de deux between Alice and the Knave has a lovely lyrical quality, although it lacks a climactic “wow!” moment. Despite that, Act III still seems to satisfy everything one could want in a ballet: grace, excitement, whimsy, and humor.
After leaving the theater, I questioned if the production needed anything other than Act III; the last fifty minutes felt like a complete ballet, which was accomplished in part because Carroll’s story is so familiar and no character introductions are necessary. Certainly, there were engaging and pleasant scenes in Act I and Act II, but everything memorable—save the intoxicating journey down the rabbit hole and the dazzling Caterpillar—was contained within the last act.
The reason for the discrepancies in lasting impressions is that, while Wheeldon does fairly accurately portray the narrative progression of Carroll’s story, he largely neglects the most important theme: chaos. In Carroll’s book, Alice sought order and meaning in a “curiouser and curiouser” world of chaos, yet even chaos is contained within a structure, governed by rules, and ultimately patterned—all of which Carrol, an Oxford mathematician, understood. His preface poem warns us that “there will be nonsense,” although the tale will be interrupted “not more than once a minute,” and thus he crafted the madness with an underlying structure. Only in Act III does Wheeldon unshackle himself from the rigidity of ballet and embrace absurdity in his choreography, straying from tradition and instead allowing—even humorously exploiting—quirkiness. This is best demonstrated in the Act III dance of the cards, in which each step is unexpected, yet the canon of dancers establishes a clear organizational pattern, allowing the audience to make sense of nonsense as Alice herself attempts in the book.
The broad appeal of the Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is also the source of frustration for those of us who appreciate the complexity of ballet or treat Carroll’s story as something more than a children’s read: Wheeldon focuses so heavily on representing the plot that he overlooks the chaos present throughout the book, and his commitment to producing wonderment through special effects leads to lengthy sections when there is movement but not much dancing. The result is that it’s less true “ballet” and more resembles The Nutcracker’s weird, dramatic cousin. There’s simply no need for the show to be almost three hours long; it would make sense to cut substantial portions of Act 1, such as the party scene. But perhaps I’m overly critical. The two little girls sitting directly in front of me—neither could have been more than ten years old—seemed thrilled the entire performance, even though I assume it was far past their bedtime. Since it became nearly impossible to get a ticket for the show, perhaps Wheeldon had inadvertently proven that there is demand to see a ballet, but only if it doesn’t have too much ballet.
