The Royal Ballet: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Royal Opera House, London
September 28, 2024

Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland succeeds on many levels. Designed to appeal to a family audience it is full of wit and invention. Choreographically and musically it’s a treat, its big waltz and later neoclassical ensemble dance for the pack of cards are a delight, and there are some sweet numbers for Alice (here aged 15 rather than seven as in the book) and Jack, the gardener who gets fired before turning into the Knave of Hearts.

It’s all very pleasing on the eye. A little unsettling here and there but nothing that’s going to upset anyone too much, probably children least of all. Indeed, it’s a ballet that even those who think they could never like the art form would probably enjoy. It certainly entertains, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

That ballet is very much a product of the creative team as a whole. Bob Crowley’s designs, given a helping hand by Gemma Carrington’s projections, are simply brilliant. Wonderful image follows wonderful image, although a clear winner is surely the shape-shifting Cheshire Cat. Its various parts manipulated cleverly by a crew of back-suited figures, it often seems to appear, then float above the action before dissolving back into nothingness. Pure genius.

Joby Talbot’s cinematic yet always very danceable and listenable-to music scores equally highly.

Wheeldon and Nicholas Wright, who wrote the scenario are remarkably faithful to the original book. Almost every character and episode in the story is present, the Mock Turtle and Gryphon being the only omissions. Additions come first in the shape of a prologue set in 1862 Oxford that establishes real equivalents of the fantasy characters and love interest for Alice, in the shape of Jack/The Knave of Hearts. Elsewhere, friend of the family Lewis Carroll becomes the White Rabbit, a magician turns into Mad Hatter, a visiting Rajah morphs into the Caterpillar, and Alice’s overbearing mother becomes the homicidal Queen of Hearts. There’s also an epilogue that brings us into the present day.

The opening matinée of the season was a triumph for Viola Pantuso in the title role. She felt real. Alert and bright-eyed, she showed us a slightly stubborn but always gentle and courteous teenager. She gave us someone clearly curious but ultimately unfazed by the situation she finds herself in and the surreal characters she meets. Not once did she come across as twee.

Her dancing was fine too. One solo on a very empty stage that emphasised her loneliness in Wonderland, a crowded place but other than the Knave, one where she had no friends, stood out in particular.

The addition of Jack/The Knave of Hearts as love interest not only creates a much-needed narrative thread that’s not present in the book, although even Wheeldon loses sight of it sometimes, but also allows opportunities for pas de deux. Pantuso and Marcelino Sambé made a pleasing couple, there pas de deux gently romantic rather than sizzling. But in the context, that’s probably about right.

Partially guided by Luca Acri’s nervous, fidgety White Rabbit, who comes complete with some very 1960s round pink glasses, the ballet takes on Alice’s journey through Wonderland. There’s a lot to see, a lot of characters to meet.

Highlight of Act One is when Alice finds herself in the nightmarish kitchen-cum-abbatoir–cum-sausage factory of the Duchess (Thomas Whitehead) and her deranged, cleaver-wielding cook (Olivia Cowley). Home to a huge mincer and rather a lot of carcasses in huge pans, it gives plenty of scope for dark humour, not least the seasoning of the baby ready for the pot.

Act Two introduces us to that giant Cheshire Cat, whose multi-part head, body and limbs float apart and reunite at will, and the multi-dancer Caterpillar led by the bare-chested Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød, before it’s time for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

It’s one of the few places that feels like an opportunity missed, He’s not very mad, and it’s not much of a party either. It does provide an opportunity for some top tap dancing from Calvin Richardson, however, although his later appearance as a witness at the Knave’s trial, when I’ll swear his shoes speak, is even better.

After a glorious waltz in a garden of summery colours, Act Three takes us to the greenery of the Queen of Hearts. Claire Calvert had a whale of a time contriving to simultaneously evoke fear while displaying utter comic lunacy, at first coasting around in solid red structure, a sort of cross between an eighteenth-century ball gown and an expensive perfume bottle.

After she escapes her contraption, amusingly also revealing a very disinterested King of Hearts (Aiden O’Brien), she had great fun with a comic tango. But even better, is her quite delicious pastiche of the Rose Adagio, complete with jam tarts. With her cavalier cards equally incompetent and scared lest they get it wrong an lose their heads, she finds herself in splits and later flat on her face. Very clever. Very funny.

The act has so many more pleasures including the brilliant flamingo puppets, and the trial, before the final winsome pas de deux for Alice and the Knave, which ends with the pair’s arms joined in the shape of a heart.

It’s all good fun. But, even with the additions, the ballet does struggle at times for a decent linear narrative. It is very episodic. And with so much to pack in, there’s no time for character development, save partly for Alice. But even she remains oddly disengaged in some scenes.

Still, having been largely ignored by choreographers for decades, perhaps because of its narrative issues, Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland does largely do the book proud. He and his creative team, and it is very much a team effort, have captured Carroll’s surreal world well.

The Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is at the Royal Opera House, London to November 1, 2024, before returning next year.