Free Theatre’s production of Alice takes as its starting point the peculiar relationship between mathematician, photographer and clergyman Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and young Alice Tidwell, the girl who was his favourite photographic subject and who became the heroine of his books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Like Free Theatre’s recent production of The Black Rider, Alice was originally a collaboration between theatre director Robert Wilson and musician Tom Waits, here joined by librettist Paul Schmidt, and was originally commissioned by Thalia Theater Hamburg in the early 1990s.

Alice, directed here by Peter Falkenberg,is interested in the nature of time, memory and fantasy. How can we hold onto fond childhood memories and desires that possibly never existed? This adaptation embraces the episodic, phantasmagoric nature of its literary sources, which in turn give the impression of a series of photographic or cinematic snapshots. We swing from scenes that feel like they are being played out underwater, to musical interludes that move between maudlin, yearning ballads and sea shanties that are the aural equivalent of peaty whisky and broken glass. It often has a languid dream-like quality that encompasses both the distorted, uncanny nature of Wonderland and Free Theatre’s interest in German expressionism and modes of performance that can perhaps be sometimes described as alienating or blurring the boundaries of ‘traditional’ modes of acting.

It’s an engrossing production with some delightful and truly satisfying moments: Alice (Emma Johnston) shrinks and falls down the rabbit hole; The Mad Hatter (Chris Reddington) reveals a door inside a tree; Alice and the White Rabbit (George Parker, who also plays Charles Dodgson and the White Knight) use a looking-glass to reflect a harsh spotlight back onto the audience as we’re subjected to a bone-rattling version of The Jabberwocky; a resigned white sheep (Marian McCurdy) eyerolls her way through a sales pitch; puppets Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Greta Bond) bicker and wave their little umbrellas; the Caterpillar (Pascal Ackermann) wiggles his way down through the set while knocking out a bluesy number about a man with no body.

The production’s emphasis upon Victorian cinematic and photographic technologies asks the audience to consider the aesthetic and philosophical implications of image-making, in particular the manipulation and ‘freezing’ of time. Stuart Lloyd-Harris’s marvellous set and lighting designs also play with the construction of dreams and memory, and the interplay of light and shadow.

We start in an under-saturated sepia-toned space of a photographic studio, which traps dimly-lit Alice, as both three-dimensional person and two-dimensional image, within a collapsible picture frame. The larger playing space, which is exposed as a type of Wonderland, recalls the early silent film studios of cinema pioneer Georges Méliès. Shifts in lighting and a large movable platform create distinct environments for each of the productions episodes. The overall effect is that we are never sure of what is inside or outside, what is the subject or what is the image, or how reality or fantasy are being stitched together. It’s evocative, intelligent and effective.

The band, throughout, are remarkable. Reddington (keys), Reuben Derrick (reeds), Mike Kime (double bass), Heather Webb (guitar and banjo) and Rory Dalley (percussion) weave together a roughly textured, faded musical tapestry. They make saws sing and throw cymbals across the stage; they creak and hiss and warble. It’s broken-down musical architecture that’s held together by cigarette smoke and twine. I’d have happily stayed listening to them all night, and it’s a pity we don’t get to applaud them properly at the end.

It’s clear that these Waits / Wilson collaborations are an ideal fit for Free Theatre’s philosophy and aesthetic project. They are also beautifully suited to the sorts of playing spaces that are able to be created within The Gym at the Christchurch Arts Centre. I hope they will complete the trilogy by undertaking the third of these collaborations, the Wilson and Waits’ adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. 

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