Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure 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 a central 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 affected. 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-day woman'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:
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.