What has happened to Alice? Why is she so grumpy and where is her Alice band? The Alice (Elian Mai West) before us, in a grey skirt suit, is behaving like a thoroughly boring grownup. Then again, she is no longer in Wonderland: this is postwar Cardiff and she is a single mother facing up to some serious issues: a bombed out home, a husband lost to war and a free-spirited daughter, Carys (Mari Fflur), on the brink of adulthood, who wants to remain a child, and play.
All the wonder has left Alice Liddell (who has the full name of the child-friend on whom Lewis Carroll may have based his books). She is a town planner for Cardiff council, heading up an unpopular project to turn a street on which children play into a multistorey car park. But the Queen of Hearts, the tyrant ruler of Wonderland, wants a rematch to a croquet game. So the White Rabbit (Keiron Self) skitters into Alice’s life and sweeps her back into a Wonderland populated by characters of the classic tale. All are given new storylines, rather like the errant fairytale cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
