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Source: frankwildhorn.com

WONDERLAND: ALICE'S NEW MUSICAL ADVENTURE

Live Performance
Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center
Tampa, FL
Reviewed by Jason Fortner

Since 1865, the first year of publication, ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND have been told and retold in hundreds of variations, often interpolating characters and ideas from the second Alice book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Lewis Carroll's colorful characters and whimsical prose have enchanted readers and audiences for 144 years, with everyone from W.C. Fields, Carol Channing and even the Flintstones finding ways to tell the tale.

With so many versions out there, was there really a need for a "new" look at this material?

WONDERLAND, the new musical playing the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Tampa, Florida tries to shed new light onto the Alice legend by updating, modernizing and twisting the concept, but alas, the entire effort falls short in nearly every department.

Composer Frank Wildhorn, teamed with Director/Bookwriter Gregory Boyd and Lyricist/Bookwriter Jack Murphy have attempted to create a new hip show, sort of a WICKED meets THE WIZ treatment of the story, but with few exceptions, the evening comes off as a misguided mess. This is a musical without a purpose, flash with no real drive, emotion or theatrical logic.

Re-inventing the role of Alice as a Type A personality Mom who hasn't enough time to juggle family and career, the show gets off to a laborious start with a prolonged rooftop cocktail party scene where Alice and company sing "Worst Day Of My Life", a sentiment not lost on the audience. This is lyric writing from the "beat the dead horse" school of composition, belaboring points that weren't fresh, new or interesting to start with. Here at the party we meet the people in her life, all dressed in bizarre costumes that are a cross between WICKED and the Time Warp dancers from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. This scene tries to be like the farm scene from THE WIZARD OF OZ, giving us hints as to who plays what later in the show, but these new characterizations are so off base from the originals we quickly lose interest.

After much gnashing of teeth over Alice's bad mothering skills, we finally head to Wonderland via an overly long elevator ride with a joke telling Tweedle Dee & Dum. These same two actors will play the Caterpiller (as an oh so cool hepcat) and Cheshire Cat (as a Latino street gang leader?) with very little character variation, another odd choice given Carroll's broadly drawn character studies.

Once in WONDERLAND the show finally comes to life with the number "Welcome to Wonderland", a crazy piece of pure whimsy featuring almost the entire cast cavorting in matching "Alice" in costumes. This song is truly the highlight of the show, and had the creative team maintained this level of creativity and joy, the show might have future potential. The choreography, by Marguerite Derricks, is often clever and captivating, but is often brought down by the flatness of the book and generic nature of the score.

Despite the overall weaknesses, there are some standout performances. The Caterpillar's "Advice From A Caterpillar" is performed in a style not unlike "The Viper's Drag" from AIN'T MISBEHAVIN', which clever parasol choreography from six female dancers. Karen Mason rises above the ennui as a daffy "Queen of Hearts" who is not the villain of the show but rather a silly cameo, but all her moments shine. Another highlight is the number "One Knight", performed by the White Knight in the style of the Backstreet Boys, a funny relief (but rather dated) spoof.

In addition to the Boy Band takeoff, we also see characters do the tired "snaps in a Z" movement, the Cabbage Patch Dance, and other pop culture references from somewhere in the 1990's. The creative team needs to be current if they want to be relevant to today's culture. These outdated bits make the show feel dated and tired, not brand new. Pastiche is fine, but attempts to be timely in this show fail again and again, perhaps owing to the age of the creative team.

The low points of the show include the re-invention of the Mad Hatter as an evil woman with a Napoleonic complex, out to take over Wonderland after singing numbers that would not seem out of place in STARMITES or CARRIE. Her absolute nadir was the number "Nick of Time", staged like a 1980's music video complete with Fembot backup dancers and adding nothing to advance the already creaky plot. Again and again the show ditches Carroll's world for tired numbers we feel we've already seen, such as the battle of the sexes number "Don't Wanna Fall In Love" where we learn that men don't like to ask for directions and women prefer romance. Yawn.

By the time we meet the Jabberwock, a sort of Hannibal Lecter meets Ozzy Ozbourne character, this show has crashed and burned with no hope of redemption. His "Misunderstood" number could easily sum up the whole show, as it left anyone with a sense of theatre logic searching for a clue to the reasons behind this plot.

I wish I could say more positive things, but this show is dull, derivative and totally unnecessary. Many questions remain.

Why is the main color used in costuming green? Is it to remind us of WICKED, a show that I'm not fond of but is easily 100x better than WONDERLAND? Everyone else is mainly garbed in black & white, with Alice running around in Cassie's red dress from A CHORUS LINE. With Wonderland as your setting, why not let loose with the color palette?

When did the White Rabbit become the Cowardly Lion, running around the stage afraid to battle the Wicked Witch, oops, the Mad Hatter. (There are a lot of WIZARD OF OZ moments in this show, which does nothing to please the fans of the Alice stories.)

And why end the show with a long light saber fight on a chess board, clunked out with long plastic tubes, between Alice and the Mad Hatter? Did they just run out of ideas?

Odd choices abound in this show, and in the time remaining in this run I doubt any of them can be fixed in time to ensure a big future for this show.

In the meantime, those willing to pay Broadway prices can go see this "Alice in Video Game Wonderland" mishmash for themselves and perhaps state "not since Wonderland have I seen".

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