Alice

This one hour show is based on both the Alice stories (particularly Alice in Wonderland) and the life of the real Alice, Alice Hargreaves and her son Alan during the war. With Alice cowering in her basement from the bombs and Alan waiting to engage the enemy they both retreat into a fantasy world built around the characters and episodes Lewis Carroll created. In this production, nost of the story is told through imaginatively created puppets that "emerge" out of the household items stacked around Alice in her basement. Some of these are immensely clever and engaging, such as The Queen of Hearts, others less so. 

Somehow for me, however, the show lacked a thread. When her son dies in the war and the telegram wings its way, like the butterfly referenced earlier, to her hand, I was unmoved. I was also a little detached from some of the puppetry, although the movement was excellent (only to be expected I suppose as Arran Glass is extremely experienced) they did not "come to life" as I wanted, personally I think with small puppets its all about eye line, if the pupeteer looks at the puppet it is a puppet, if their eye-line and the puppet's match then the puppet is alive, seeing through the eyes of the pupeteer ... or maybe, a little puppet knowledge is a dangerous thing. For whatever reason I waas less engaged than most of the audience, including my own party of seven so it may be that it just didn't speak to me.

Despite the above, an entertaining evening well worth the trip.

Audience review: A mostly attentive and pleasingly full audience except for one man who insisted on joking with his friend throughout, one woman who had to explain every reference to the book to her child and one young boy who just farted throughout the show making us feel sick.