REVIEW: Fantastically realised Alice Through The Looking Glass is at the Dream Factory, Playbox Theatre, Warwick, until 30th December

Reviewer Steve Sutherland steps into wonderland with a fantastically realised Alice Through The Looking Glass, at the Dream Factory, Playbox Theatre, Warwick running until 30th December

Last weekend, in a world first, an artificial intelligence-powered judge was programmed to score each round of the return heavyweight boxing title clash between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia. It was an experiment to ascertain whether AI can be used in the future to usurp human judges and clean up the controversial results that regularly occur due to the inconsistencies inherent in flesh and blood officials relying on individual perception and interpretation to decide, in the absence of a knock-out, the outcome of the action.

Lord only knows what AI would have made of the fisticuffs witnessed in Playbox Theatre’s Alice Through The Looking Glass held on the same self-night, the bout of comical biffage between Ed Twyman’s geezerish Unicorn and Ethan Phillips’ bellowing Lion more Charlie Chaplin than Mike Tyson, an episode packed with abundant pratfalls, thwacks a-go-go, a ref accidentally flattened and near out-for-the-count and a particularly ooooof final blow to the nuts.

My guess is that our AI pal would have declared itself soundly defeated, resigned from the android ranks on the spot, ticked that annoying ‘I am not a robot’ box online, declared “calculations and accuracy be damned!” and, realising fallibility is where all the fun is, set about doing whatever it takes for AI to sign on to the human race.

Buckle up cos there’s plenty more where that came from. The antics in the Playbox Xmas Alice are super-frantic, just like the 1871 Lewis Carroll book on which its based, but the original negligible plot has been imbued with purpose and meaning by Toby Quash and his team of Blank Shift writers via a series of spectacular set-pieces which gradually reveal a treasure trove of precious little morals like oysters offering forth their pearls.

The tale, such as it is, portrays Alice’s voyage of discovery through the looking glass in a bid to be crowned a queen, an ambition accomplished by making moves, like a pawn, across a gigantic chess board. Our Alice is Mery Sutherland, as perfect an Alice as you could ever wish for, plucky, inquisitive, aglow with youthful excitement, courageous, inquisitive, soaking up all the absurdities, rebuffing the many rudenesses, mentally wrangling with a plethora of riddles and always holding her own with good humour against the cavalcade of strange personages determined to undermine her sanity and befuddle her stand on ever-shifting ground.

Being a show suited to an audience of all-ages and it being Christmas and all, it’s only meet that we give first dibs to the little ‘uns. Eavesdropping post-show, Liam Browne’s supremely pompous Humpty Dumpty was a major talking point, especially the bit where Alice can’t tell whether he’s wearing a cravat or a belt because, well, he’s an egg and so it’s tough to distinguish between his neck and his girth. A boastful buffoon, he and his subservient retinue cook up many a laugh and in the foyer later I earwigged this:

Six-year-old: “Mummy, was Humpty Dumpty alright after that fall.”

Mummy: “Er, sadly darling, no.”

Another kiddie fave was the episode of physical and verbal chaos shoo-ed in on a bicycle by Dylan Somanathan’s Tweedledee and Nathanael Saleh’s Tweedledum, the pair of ‘em a comic whirlwind of St. Vitus dancing and brain-boggling one-liners. The curtailed attempt at reciting “the longest poem we know”, The Walrus And The Carpenter, and the cowardly battle over the ruined rattle were particularly popular.

It was also clear that the more theatrically ambitious ankle-biters in attendance were enthused about the sequence in the garden featuring the talking tree and chatterbox flowers with an obvious yen to be Emilia Danks-Smith’s cheekily impertinent Tiger Lily or one of the snickering daisies.

Many of the older lot were greatly taken by the sinister railway station scene involving The Ballad Of The Beetle People with a mournful choreography reminiscent of the workers in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis accompanied by a dark dirge which brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many I had not thought death had undone so many.” Even within a presentation so beautifully styled overall, this was a remarkable stand-out, matched a little later for chills when the Jabberwocky rocked up.

Talking of styling, among the many inventively costumed characters, it must be said that the female royalty were the very embodiment of radiance. Elysia Sully was Red and Esme Fleeman White, the former bossy but kind, the latter forgetful and forgiving. It is in the colour co-ordination of their outfits with Alice’s mother (red) and grandmother (white), that director Emily Quash most strikingly delivers this production’s bold attempt to discover some poignancy within Lewis Carroll’s errant nonsense. The themes are broadly about how hard it is to grow up, how we should be ever optimistic and ambitious (“Believe in unimaginables”), how no matter what pressures you’re under or what temptations come your way you should always remember who you are, and how a life lived fully renders mortality beautiful. Or something like that.

The intent is most movingly imparted by Tom Lomas’ helpful but pensive White Knight who appears to be nearing the end of his days. “It’s a sorry thing to lose so much of what I used to feel courageous about” is one of the things he says, going on gently to advise that imagination is our best weapon against the drabness of things and confessing he’d trade whatever wealth and wisdom he’s gained through his ages to be a boy again just for one sunny day. It’s tremendously sad, leavened nicely by his post script to Alice that you needn’t wither if you never stop believing in the possibilities all around you.

Such moments usher the production into Peter Pan/ Wizard of Oz territory, subtly done to touch the patrons more advanced in years without overshadowing the cavalcade of crazy critters bound to appeal to the striplings. We should also mention that, among the number already praised, we needs must add Quillan Mitchell’s hilarious laid-back campy Gnat, Elliott Barlow’s dapper playboy tree, Jack Hobson’s grumpy Frog, Gianluca’s put-upon Hatter and Phoebe Roberts’ twitchy, highly-strung Hare. All and sundry bang on brill.

As a matter of interest, a few days before this show was staged it was reported that, after years of scientific research, Melvin Vopson, an associate professor in physics at the University of Portsmouth, has concluded that life is, indeed, but a dream and that the odds that we're living in a real universe as opposed to a simulated one are, and I quote, “one in billions”.

His theory is that the universe is actually the invention of a giant computer and that we opted to enter the simulation at birt-

And finally, there’s the 'Narnia' theory’ which suggests that time in the real world moves much faster compared with time in the simulation so a single minute in the real world could last up to 100 years in the simulation, while one lifetime in the real world could be akin to 4.2 billion years, assuming an average life of 80 years. By opting to live in the simulation, the theory goes, we could experience multiple lives back-to-back, essentially achieving immortality.

“This is exactly how the time dilation works when we dream,” explains Mr Vopson. “In the dream, the events that we experience can appear to last minutes, hours or days, but in the real conscious state the dream lasted in fact fractions of seconds.”

Any concrete proof? No. Any clues? Tons. The fact there are limits to how fast light and sound can travel suggest they may be governed by the speed of a computer processor. Vopson also reckons it’s all laid out in the Bible if you know where to look!

So, when Dum and Dee argue with Alice about whether she is really just a figure in the snoring Red King’s dream and that she would cease to exist should he wake up, and when Alice’s grandmother insists that life really is just a dream, there may be way more to it than just a conceit of fiction.

Alice is Playbox Theatre’s 25th Christmas show at the Dream Factory. For the majority of this cast this will be the last they’ll take part in before leaving this place where they have tried so many things, dreamed so many dreams, been so many characters and become who they are, heading out instead for uni, work or whatever, into the realm of brutal reality. Some of them have been here at Playbox since they were infants so this Alice is extra-emotional for players, parents, gramps and siblings in the audience alike.

But, just like the play goes off Lewis Carroll’s beaten track to show generations of Alice’s family are participant in the journey through the Looking Glass, from Jennie Beattie’s grandmother - frail, fading yet still full of beans - through Celine Delahaye’s caring, fretful mother, to Florence Fittall’s primary school Alice, full of hope and promise, so within the cast of this performance is revealed a new generation of spirited younger actors emerging into the limelight.

And the happy thing is, no-one ever really leaves. Every December 24th, they gather round the tree in the foyer - babes in arms, recent alumni, Playbox mums and Playbox dads once on stage here themselves - to sing hymns and celebrate, returning likes swallows in summer to this place of weirdness and wonder, enjoying the magic that will always live within them at a place that they will always think of as home.