Lewis likes Liddel Girls...
Oxford don smitten with 7-year-old girl propels
her through an unhinged alternate world. Things
spring to life. All creatures and people are mad.
Property is stripped; the rules turn indide out.
What's left is raw instinct, and love rising up
from the wreckage.
[Alice In Wonderland, Spooky Action Theatre
performing at FLASHPOINT/Mead Theatre Lab/
916 G Street, NW Washington, D.C. May 11-June 4
adapted by Andre Gregory and THE MANHATTAN
PROJECT from Lewis Carroll & directed by
Richard Henrich]
The play captures everything that explodes through
a room of doors and walls: the momentum, wildness,
joy, acobatic daring, ensemble verve and edgy emotional
volability--the great delinquent lunacy of it all. Lewis
Carroll blows Alice up into a baloon. The caterpillar
smokes his hookah on the backs of four actors who
form the mushroom. Humpty Dumpty, an egg smashed
on his face, falls from his lonely wooden tower above. And
a crazy-ass tea-party happens over, under and all around
a ravaged wooden table.Full of uncanny pertinence for
our very moment, the book became a wholly theatrical
experience. It was the first of three great events (on
May 13th) I took in last week.
Gerald Schwartz
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