Actor's Theatre

Hooray!! The theatre season has started. And it started with a bang. Lookingglass Alice showed Alice progressing from being a pawn on a chessboard to becoming a queen at the end. Along the way she met interestingly done Lewis Carroll characters. Following dozens of shoes plummeting from the ceiling, the caterpillar appeared, representing the toddler stage of life. "He" was portrayed by three guys doing everything in synchronization: flaying arms, leap-frogging, stepping in rhythm. Tweedledee and Tweedledum acted like preadolescents with Alice, refusing to shake her hand. The Mad Hatter had his "adult" tea party but only after he and his other guests snatched folding chairs out of the air as they fly up from below stage and THROUGH a large basket. As an "adult", Alice was crowned queen and met Humpty Dumpty. He was sitting on a very tall ladder and when he tried to maneuver his way down to shake hands with Alice, the ladder tipped over and he fell backwards through a trap door. The audience gasped at that because it happened so suddenly and finally.

Acrobatics was an integral part of the play. Trapeze feats such walking on stilts, hopping around on springy shoes that looked like feet from a Star Wars character, tumbling, somersaulting, standing on others' heads or shoulders, riding a trick bicycle and unicycle were included.

My favorite character was the Red Queen. "She" (played by a guy) was hilarious. After Alice drank the shrinking potion, the Red Queen -- who was about12-15 feet tall, drifted on stage. You could see the top of her body staying stationary but obviously female feet wearing bright red, glittery shoes kept poking out from underneath the hem of the dress. Later in the play while she was floating in an umbrella on water (created by guys billowing long, wide sheets of turquoise fabric so it looked like waves), the real person was actually clad in black pants from the waist down. The umbrella was secured around his waist and his teeny legs and feet wearing the shiny red shoes stuck out in front of him on the umbrella.

I'm having a hard time describing this play because so much of it involved the circus acts, they physicality of the actors. It was an excellent play.