Review

Curiouser And Curiouser

Lewis Carroll meets Gilbert and Sullivan in Opera Anywhere's new Christmas show - a delicious irony, as relations between Carroll and the Savoy duo were somewhat cool after the Oxford don was offended by the "Big, big D" in HMS Pinafore. But now Opera Anywhere's Annabel Molyneux has engineered a posthumous collaboration with this panto-cum-opera, which combines the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan with a plot loosely based on Alice in Wonderland. The result is two hours of hilarity and mayhem, featuring a Vodka-swigging White Rabbit, a lovesick Caterpillar, a randy King of Hearts (who spends most of his time flirting with the Rabbit) and a slightly deranged Cook.

The traditional pantomime elements are there, too - the. Queen of the Hearts is the Dame, the Duchess is a Fairy Godmother in disguise and the Knave of Hearts is the Principal Boy, who falls in love with Alice.

Songs from the Savoy operas are threaded into the plot seamlessly, with surprisingly little need for textual alteration. Loudly Let the Trumpet Bray from Iolanthe, for example, heralds the arrival of all and sundry into the garden for croquet, the Caterpillar muses on his lost love with Time Was When Love and I Were Well Acquainted from The Sorcerer, and the finale from Pinafore brings the piece to a rousing finish, with "He is an Englishman!" changed to "For we are in Wonderland!".

There are some wonderful individual performances, particularly from Sarah Haigh as Alice, Mike Woodward as the Queen of Hearts, Cathy Bell as the Knave and Paul Thomas as the Caterpillar. But the star, for me, is David Stuart, whose glorious baritone and comic timing as the King of Hearts are outstanding. Once again, this innovative company has come up with a fun evening guaranteed to get you in the festive mood. Curiouser and Curiouser continues at various Oxfordshire venues throughout December.

Nicola Lisle, Dec 2005, Oxford Times.