Wonderland is a lot of silly, inspired, dazzling theatrical fun. Sweeping the audience through eight levels of hallucinatory hijinks, it aims to be, literally, spectacular, and almost always succeeds.
Janet Dacal is a politically correct, assertive Alice, Karen Mason is a hilariously peremptory Queen of Hearts, and Edwin Staudenmayer as the White Rabbit is a creature right out of a storybook: anxious, harried and your best friend just when you need him. Frank Wildhorn's music is rousing and, on a few occasions, touching, and Jack Murphy's lyrics are by turns biting and (too) sentimental. The show is visually stunning, from its constantly changing sets and bizarre costumes to the projections that take us on vast journeys in a world of wonders, and the story that's its backbone — a woman's search for her escaped daughter — is always reason enough for the series of adventures that fills its two acts.
If the show has any weakness, it's that the frame story is too predictable: we know Alice and daughter will eventually be reunited, so there's not much real suspense beyond how the reunion will be effected. But just as the visual pageant of The Lion King was the real source of that show's power, in Wonderland it's the moment-to-moment inventiveness — visual, melodic, lyric — that makes the musical work. If you're looking for deep psychological analysis of a modern Alice's existential malaise, don't bother buying a ticket. But if you just want to enjoy what the human imagination can realize — given enough money and the services of wildly talented artists — this cornucopia should more than satisfy. Or to say it more succinctly: eight levels of reality is enough.
As most everyone knows, Wonderland is a project of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts (née the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center) and is headed to Broadway if all goes well during its cross-country tryouts. At this point, I would say: most is going well.
We begin with Alice Cornwinkle (Dacal), a successful, neglectful best-selling author whose husband Jack is about to divorce her, and whose daughter Chloe is feeling increasingly forgotten. Finally, Chloe can take it no more: she decides to "go down the rabbit hole," and makes it clear to her mother that the only way to find her is to "become queen" — an unexplained goal which can only be attained if Alice "wins the game," gets to a mysterious "eighth square" and passes through "the eighth door." With her daughter's fate hanging in the balance, Alice gives chase. She goes through door number one — into an apparently innocent elevator — and in one of the show's many visual feats, she hurtles down through so many strata of reality, we can't be sure that when she finishes, she's still in the Milky Way.
In fact, she's not: she's somewhere much more vivid and absurd, where men and women both wear blue and white dresses, and where the company sings the marvelous anthem "Welcome to Wonderland." A short stay, and then she's through door number two — where she meets a singing caterpillar (Tommar Wilson), several more exotic and colorful creatures, and is hastened toward door number three — you get the idea.
Among the oddities she meets as she continues her search for the elusive Chloe: a Hispanic cat called El Gato (the very funny Jose Llana); the aforementioned White Rabbit, with his backward-running clock; the stupendously narcissistic Queen of Hearts; and, looking like an evil Deborah Harry, the blonde and vicious Mad Hatter (Nikki Snelson). There's also a White Knight (Darren Ritchie) who looks curiously like husband Jack, and the murderous, merciless Jabberwock (Tad Wilson, full of angst), a creature of the Looking-Glass World, where creative people — dreamers, artists, children — are kept in shackles and beheaded.
Will Alice ever figure how to get to the eighth door and beloved Chloe? Will Lewis Carroll's (cameo appearance) words of advice (the lovely song "I Am My Own Invention") and Alice's own prowess in woman-to-woman combat (that Mad Hatter is a badass) prove enough to get our heroine through the dreaded seventh door? And what comes next?
There are a few flaws in Wonderland. For one thing, Alice's impulse to dance happily during the "Go With The Flow" section of Act 1 is psychologically nonsensical, and two sentimental songs in a row during a pivotal stretch of Act 11 — "Love Begins" and "Home" — slow the musical down too noticeably. Finally, the show's moral lesson — about parenthood and partnership — is, for all its truth, trite. But these are forgivable defects — and may even be remedied as this brand new musical goes through its inevitable development process. Ranged against the superb singing of the whole cast, Susan Hilferty's brilliant costumes and Neil Patel's surprising sets, they don't stop the show from pleasing. This is more fun than a carnival.
Will it make it on Broadway? I can't guess. Neither can anyone.
But the Tampa Bay area just got lucky. This one's worth your attention.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2009.