Not Your Child’s Alice in Wonderland
Author: Emily Armstrong
Under a dream-like haze strewn with various lampshades, “Your Alice” by Billie Aken-Tyers unfolds with an unpredictably layered exploration of a classic tale. The play delves into the real Lewis Carroll—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—and his questionable relationship with the titular inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice Liddell, joyfully portrayed by Eliza Shea, weaves seamlessly through the play’s various layers; from gleeful ten-year-old one moment, to figment of Dodgson’s fantasy the next, Shea performs with true power from start to finish. Luke Antony Neville’s Charles Dodgson presents as a foreboding, tortured presence, hovering ominously at the fringes of every interaction amongst the cast. His calculated restraint is given explosive context by the performances of the ensemble. At once chaotically whimsical and sinister, the well-known figures that have populated Wonderland in its many iterations truly come to life, and are given full-bodied significance in the exploration and judgment of Dodgson’s attraction to young Alice. The story and performances, elevated with dynamic, visually stunning choreography and set design, combine to deliver not only a marvelous theatre experience, but also a truly thought-provoking one.
The first portion of the play dangles Charles’ attraction and feelings for Alice just out of reach, leaving the audience to observe with cautious horror. As one begins to question whether the elephant in the room will ever be fully addressed, the production takes a turn, staring dead-on into the internal tumult of the famed author’s mind. Despite the initial noncommittal traipse between naïve dismissal and vague pardon, the creatures of Wonderland ultimately stand as Dodgson’s judge, jury, and executioner. In doing so, they work to establish Alice’s role as a child, distinguishing her true self from the sexualized counterpart that resides within the author’s mind. As the questionable balance between excuse, judgment, and absolution teeters, this production stands as an exceptionally relevant study within the current social context and discussion of sexual boundaries and politics. With a story that so widely traverses the self-proclaimed “grey area” of sexuality and ethics, Alice’s transition to adulthood and maturity remains something to be mourned; not in losing the childlike qualities that leant her to Dodgson’s pedophilic tendencies, but rather in the loss of a purely whimsical childhood that was appropriated for the sake of the author’s own fantasies (as well as those of the countless readers to follow). Though Dodgson’s attraction to Alice remains inarguably wrong, it provides a complex lens through which to read Wonderland in this current day and age. As the author is to the end comforted yet tortured by the figures that make up his own self, the play leaves an inimitably striking effect upon those who have, as everyone else, taken Alice to be their own.
