Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet: A beautifully judged, eye-boggling fantasy
Saturday’s season-launching matinée marked the 62nd performance of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at Covent Garden – which, for a work created as recently as 2011, is quite something. If that statistic says much about its quality and popularity, it’s worth adding that the Royal Ballet’s only other new full-length ballet in almost 30 years to have enjoyed comparable success – 2014’s The Winter’s Tale – is also by Christopher Wheeldon. What, frankly, would they do without that Yeovil-born wonder?
If you were in a curmudgeonly mode, you could carp that the work never overcomes the original’s episodic, and-then-and-then structure, and that nearly all Carroll’s wordplay is (of course) gone. You could also gripe, more justifiably, that 2hrs 50min is an ask for young attention spans, and arguably for grown-up attention spans too – especially when your seven-year-old son has to sit on your lap for almost the entire thing because the venue has run out of children’s booster cushions (inexcusable at what is very largely a children’s ballet, and with tickets costing up to £190 each).
But it is hard to see how Wheeldon and co could have more imaginatively put on stage the book’s lysergically dreamlike magic and strangeness. And I was particularly struck this time round by the fact that it isn’t only one of the funniest and most magical works in the Royal Ballet’s repertory (though it certainly is that), but also one of the most beautiful. With respectful and intelligent nods to John Tenniel’s original 1865 wood-block illustrations, designer Bob Crowley really goes to town here. The evocation of mid-19th-century Oxford at the start is pure Brideshead Revisited, and the transformation scene – as reality splinters and Alice heads down (and down, and down) the rabbit-hole – is an eye-boggling marvel, setting the tone for a production that makes a point of keeping the surprises coming.
What also leaps out at this revival is how deftly Crowley’s designs and Wheeldon’s steps intertwine, so much so that it’s hard at times to know where one stops and the other starts – see, say, the croquet-mallet flamingos or the ever-growing caterpillar (the latter a decidedly groovy Lukas Bjørneboe on Saturday). And very clever, too, is the way Wheeldon at once adheres to (in the structure and overall list of choreographic “ingredients”) and subverts (in terms of the spirit of mischief) 19th-century balletic traditions.
Hats off to the show also for delivering such a strong lead role for a woman, one that, on Saturday, was absolutely pounced on by soubrettish debutante Viola Pantuso. A mere first artist she may be (only one notch above corps member), but she’s a delightfully brisk, lyrical and musical dancer – rather in the Ashton tradition – and radiates confidence: a vivid but unmannered actress too, making much of Alice’s spiritedness but without every straying into cutesiness, she is clearly a name to watch. Also debuting opposite her (and partnering her to perfection) as Jack and the Knave of Hearts was the more experienced Marcelino Sambé, every bit as engaging and entertaining as you would expect from him.
For the rest, Thomas Whitehead had a ball as the very Widow Simone-ish Duchess (a role originated by none other than Simon Russell Beale), Luca Acri made a suitably twitchy Lewis Carroll/White Rabbit, Calvin Richardson a nimble-footed, tap-dancing Mad Hatter, but it was a strong ensemble performance across the board, the corps very much included. And it would be remiss not to mention the seamlessly delivered score by Joby Talbot and co-orchestrator Christopher Austin, a piece of scintillating musical sorcery that casts a spell over every scene.
In rep until Nov 1, then returning in July 2025. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; rbo.org.uk