The insolence of Lewis Carroll's bossy little heroine has been shrunk to fit the Open Air Theatre's children's show in what is the equivalent of an end-of-pier summer panto.
Co-produced with the Unicorn Theatre and the New Shakespeare Company, they reduce Alice to an ordinary little girl from an ordinary little family - bored out of her mind on holiday.
In pursuit of the white rabbit, she is launched into the famous dream-world ruled by a croquet-, jam tart- and decapitation-obsessed Queen. But instead of going head to head with the Queen, the Alice of Charles Way's anodyne adaptation fights shy of cross-examining or dominating the crazy world in which she finds herself.
The treatment seems aimed at pre-school children to a maximum age of about 10. Anyone older will struggle to be transported by a good-humoured, but rudimentary experience. For accompanying adults, especially, Carroll's absurdism is often realised only as exasperation or slapstick. Even belching passes for comedy and an "it's behind you" atmosphere reduces the imaginative threshold to a lowest common denominator.
However, the paranoid mania of some of the characters remains, while the Queen's thirst for blood and a booming jabberwocky add a touch of tension.
At the preview performance, Emily Gray's cast seemed well versed and comfortable on Sean Donahoe's set, decorated in blue and yellow like a gaudy funfair. Although certain imaginative leaps, such as the framing device of Alice's escape to her parallel universe, are uninspired, there are performances to be enjoyed.
Ben Fox's and James Lailey's Five and Nine of Hearts are an amusing vaudeville double act - not to mention their puffa jacketed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Rosalind Paul is also a likeable and squeakily girly Alice - although the central stand-off with Sharon White's Queen never really climaxes. The result is diverting for kids but not much like wonderland for adults.
Alice: An Adventure in Wonderland
