Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was created in 1865 by Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel. Since then, many adaptations have been made, including rewrites, movies, and musicals such as the stage adaption, Alice by Heart, created by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik, and Centennial’s Skyward Theatre’s latest production.
This musical is set after the London Blitz of World War II and follows a bright teenage girl, Alice Spencer, as she is forced to take shelter in an underground tube station. Her best friend Alfred is suffering from tuberculosis, and Alice urges him to escape reality through their cherished book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Those with her in the tube station become different characters from the story, and she learns various lessons from each character. In the end, she realizes that time keeps going whether she wants it to or not, and she has to let Alfred go. Sater and Sheik’s, Alice by Heart walks through Alice’s journey in this imagined world connecting to emotional struggles in the real world, particularly grief. Alice must navigate internal and external battles including the war and relationships in order to find her identity.
Originally, theater teacher Jacob Traver, considered Alice by Heart as an afterthought, quickly shelving the idea of its production and even forgetting it for some time. However, it kept being brought up and after a pitch day with theatre students, he thought Alice by Heart would be an interesting choice, and he finally decided that they were going to put this show on.
This year, the theater department planned on putting on three productions for the first time, which added its own challenges. Traver stated it was a “much tighter rehearsal schedule than we usually have…we only had about a month.”
Senior Maddie Hall, who played the role of Cheshire Cat, revealed, “we started rehearsals for this show in November and performed in January, so it was a much quicker turnaround than we’re used to.” With the addition of winter break and snow days, she mentions how the whole cast and crew “definitely felt the rush.”
Putting on a singular production takes hours upon hours of work, and to do that three times a year along with the setbacks of scheduling, break, and inclement weather is grueling work. It just goes to show the effort and time everyone put into the production, especially since the cast had to sacrifice a lot of their schedules in order to prepare for the musical.
Alice by Heart is not like any Centennial production done before in recent years. Junior Owen Landle, who played the White Rabbit/Alfred, explains how this production has a “really abstract vibe. It’s unlike anything on the Centennial stage before because it’s one of our most personal shows yet.”
On a similar tone, Traver agrees, mentioning the show’s mature topics and its dive into complex themes unlike the shows previously.
The show itself, according to Hall, is “a really emotional show and has big themes of love, loss, coping, and grief.”
Although there were slight changes in themes and performance styles compared to past musicals like Matilda and Legally Blonde, Traver “really wanted the audience to both enjoy and have fun with the Alice in Wonderland elements, while also understanding the emotional weight and the historical context of the Alice Spencer World War II background of the show.”
Landle agreed that he wanted the audience to “feel the fun of Wonderland and the abnormality of the characters, while also being reminded with the glimpses into the real world that temporary escapes are only temporary.”
There was an impressively large turnout on opening night, proving that all of the production’s hard work was worth it. Unfortunately, the following Saturday and Sunday shows had to be canceled due to inclement weather, but the crew still managed to pull off their last show on Monday evening. All things considered, they were all very flexible with the challenges they had to face throughout the show, and they impressively pulled off one of the most time-sensitive and emotionally dense Centennial theatre productions yet.
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