ALiCE

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★

“The thrill is in the spectacle and the sheer acrobatic virtuosity of the dancers”

We first see the eponymous heroine, in Jasmin Vardimon’s dance interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s nineteenth century classic children’s novel, as a chalk animation shifting across the page of a giant book. As it reaches the edge of the page, the real-life version (Liudmila Loglisci) peeps out in wonder and trepidation before taking her first balletic steps onto the stage – or, rather, into the rabbit hole. You can understand her reticence; there is a whirlwind of activity. It appears chaotic and surreal but there is a precision to the ensemble’s movement that is a hallmark of Jasmin Vardimon MBE’s acrobatic and intense choreography.

The pages of the giant book (courtesy of Guy Bar-Amotz’ – along with Vardimon herself – inventive, slightly shabby-chic design) slowly turn, sometimes engulfing Alice, sometimes hurling her into the action. The show is split into six chapters, each representing a sequence from Carroll’s fiction, and each being a formative rite of passage for the malleable young girl. The overriding theme is that of change, particularly focusing on Alice seeking her own identity as she hits adolescence with brute force. It is an ingenious device that superimposes the fantastical elements and characters of the original story onto a very modern tale of coping with today’s socio-political minefield. Barely a word is spoken. Our understanding of the concept relies entirely on the staging, which falls into the category of physical theatre rather than dance for most of the time. It is a visual feast, accompanied by an eclectic choice of soundtrack ranging from Vivaldi to Ryuichi Sakamoto, a touch of Bach, and scratch DJ Kid Koala, among many others.

It is a touch confusing, but then that reflects the bewildering and disconcerting changes our protagonist has to go through, and how it all affects her identity. Multiple pairs of arms reach out from behind doorways, along with shadow puppet hands that paw at the evolving Alice. One of quite a few references to a predatory world, and the unwanted male attention. The message is muddied further: a part of Alice seems to enjoy this while another part is repelled. Uncertain as to which direction to turn, Alice splits into seven copies of herself as the cast dance in unison to Smokie’s much parodied, seventies hit ‘Living Next Door to Alice’.

These welcome moments of light comedy puncture the over-surreal whimsical commentary, and Vardimon works the humour into the piece with ease, so that scenes that depict physical abuse or domestic violence give way to the pleasures that can be derived from turning into an adult. Imagery and metaphor give us the inner workings of Alice’s mind while striking visual projections and scenery create the world she has stumbled into. The Cheshire Cat, a vaping caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, are all there. Even Tweedledum and Tweedledee make an appearance, wandering from ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ into this wonderland of dance and music.

There is little emotional connection. The thrill is in the spectacle and the sheer acrobatic virtuosity of the dancers. It is often impossible to believe there are only seven in the cast. There are elements of the work of Aurélia Thiérrée, or the acclaimed performance company ‘1927’. However, comparisons do Vardimon an injustice. She is in a world – and a class – of her own, combining theatre and dance in a unique way to tell the story. Not only do we see the ways in which the world she enters changes Alice, but Vardimon also shows the ways in which the world reacts to her metamorphosis. Beautifully dreamlike and unusual, marred slightly by the jarring, yet fleeting, use of literal placards drawing focus on the issues of immigration. The message would be better served among the many others that are subtly woven into the fabric of the piece.

As Alice steps back into her two-dimensional form in the pages of the book, we come full circle. We are not sure whether Alice has escaped Wonderland unchanged or awakened. A twist in the fate of the hookah-smoking (vaping in this scenario) caterpillar gives us a clue. Clues are all we seem to get in Vardimon’s interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. But we have a wonderful time not solving them. Alice couldn’t explain herself “because I am not myself, you see”. This is a show that can be watched, without being explained, simply due to the astonishing choreography performed by masters of their craft.

ALiCE

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd May 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Tristram Kenton

Last ten shows reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

BAT OUT OF HELL THE MUSICAL | ★★★★ | May 2025

SPECKY CLARK | ★★★ | May 2025

SNOW WHITE: THE SACRIFICE | ★★★★★ | April 2025

SKATEPARK | ★★★★ | April 2025

MIDNIGHT DANCER | ★★★★ | March 2025

THE DREAM | ★★★★★ | March 2025

DEEPSTARIA | ★★★★ | February 2025

VOLLMOND | ★★★★★ | February 2025

DIMANCHE | ★★★★ | January 2025

SONGS OF THE WAYFARER | ★★★★ | December 2024

ALiCE

★★★

“Oona Doherty’s script is amusing and poignant”

At the centre point of the performance, ten-year-old Specky Clark, played by Faith Prendergast, walks across the stage to a radio in the rear corner and turns it on to a dance tune by David Holmes. The music begins quietly, appearing to come from the on-stage radio, and the child starts tentatively to move, before casting off his inhibitions and dancing freely and joyfully, the music booming from the theatre’s speakers. The movements recall the freestyle dance of someone alone in their bedroom: balletic kicks interwoven with techno-club fist pumping and are exhilarating and childlike.

In the rear of the stage, which is dressed as the abattoir where Clark has been sent to work by his overbearing aunts, a series of fabric sheets hang to imitate pigs’ carcasses. One of these opens and a head emerges. It is the pig killed by Clark on his first day at the abattoir that has been resurrected by the child’s dancing for Samhain, the Gaelic festival when the departed return to life, marking the beginning of the ‘Darker Half’ of the year. This moment of rupture also marks the point at which the performance shifts from the everyday into the supernatural and the performers’ dancing becomes freer and less bound by the expectations of the quotidian.

Oona Doherty’s Specky Clark is a fictionalised dramatization of the life of her great great grandfather, sent to live with relatives in Belfast after the death of his parents in Glasgow. It intermixes biography with Gaelic traditions and is permeated by the Irish language. The piece has a strong ensemble of nine dancers in gender-swapped multiroles including Erin O’Reilly, Maëva Berthelot and Malick Cissé. True to life, it is both funny and sad, and Specky’s domineering aunts’ manhandling of the child into and out of clothes and into work at the slaughterhouse to a refrain of ‘awk poor child’, ‘God love him’ is both tragic and comical. The physical performance of these aunts is a high point of the show as they peck birdlike around their new charge, a formidable double act that will shape the orphan’s life. The resurrected pig’s crawling and contorting is also excellent.

Oona Doherty’s script is amusing and poignant, characterised by spiralling repetitions, and the sound design by Maxime Jerry Fraisse, powerful. The use of Sardinian throat singing when Specky is made to shoot the pig approaches the transcendent and original music by Lankum is good. The staging by scenographer Sabine Dargent conjures an achronological Belfast ranging from the mid-twentieth century to today, echoing the slippage between worlds of the performance’s climax. The opening is particularly striking, as Specky screams over the body of a dead parent, a life-sized puppet of death jerkily enters behind him, reaching to touch the lifeless body and raise it up – this shocking beginning sets the eerie tone for the piece.

However, some elements of the performance are less effective. A scene in which Specky is assaulted in the street after a day at work feels a little disconnected and inconsequential and the integration of Fortnite dances, while perhaps age appropriate for Specky, took me out of the moment. I also felt that the two sections of the performance, the ‘real’ and the ‘supernatural’, could have been better integrated and perhaps a longer runtime could have allowed for a fuller development of these ideas.

Nevertheless, in its scope and the powerful performances of Prendergast and the rest of the company there is much to commend Specky Clark, and the rapturous applause which greeted the end of the production suggests that maybe it just wasn’t for me.

ALiCE

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★

“The thrill is in the spectacle and the sheer acrobatic virtuosity of the dancers”

ALiCE

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd May 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Tristram Kenton

Last ten shows reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

ALiCE

ALiCE

ALiCE

SPECKY CLARK

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★

“Oona Doherty’s script is amusing and poignant”

SPECKY CLARK

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 9th May 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Luca Truffarelli

Recently reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

SPECKY CLARK

SPECKY CLARK

SPECKY CLARK

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