In one of the boathouses on the Isis, a group of Oxford students are pretending to be animals: a duck, a lorry bird, a mouse, an eaglet, a dodo. The assembled are quacking, squeaking, flapping their wings, and stomping their feet. This is a rehearsal of a scene from Alice in Wonderland in which a group of animals are trying to dry themselves after a swim. For once, the path by the river is not dominated by the sound of coxes shouting and oars slicing through the water. Today, the sound of folly prevails.
The team are preparing for their performances in Christ Church Meadow, starting 20 July, followed by a stint in London. After that, they are spending almost all of August at the Edinburgh Fringe, where they will perform Oxford’s favourite tale of bizarre nonsense a total of 36 times.
As far as impersonating strange and extinct animals goes, the scenes I am shown are promising and truly funny. The actors have already been rehearsing for a couple of weeks; a lack of academic obligations over the summer means that they have been working on Alice from 10am to 5pm every day. The group’s cohesion makes for an energetic performance: the cast and crew have fun as they perform and are open to improvisation.
Director Josie Mitchell says at first the play was largely improv-based: people created roles in an open-ended and playful way. From there, they chose the parts that worked best. The animal behaviour I witnessed had been skilfully developed, with the movements, voices, and facial expressions well-matched to each species. At one point, the duck (Johnny Purkiss) approached the audience (me) and stared sideways with an unblinking eye, just as a truly insolent Oxford duck would. Well observed.
Mitchell says it was exciting to create so many characters: Wonderland is a populous place, and each actor is playing multiple roles. “How would a dodo talk?” and “How is a rabbit going to move?” were interesting questions to answer. Still, Alice in Wonderland is designed to be more than just strange and silly physical theatre. Matt Parvin says that in adapting Carroll’s original text, he tried to make it “more of a play, rather than just put all the nonsense on stage”. While striving to retain as much of the novel as possible, Parvin has focussed on dialogue to drive the plot forward.
Mitchell speaks of a key contrast in the play, between wonder and social realism. There is Wonderland, which is going to be “expansive”, full of “strange, wondrous things”. Then there is the rather less wonderful world of Victorian England; the play will allude to “suffragettes, the Industrial Revolution, and child workers”. The production is travelling to a variety of venues, and so needs to cater to diverse audiences. The scale and vibrancy of Wonderland should appeal to children, while adults will appreciate the political undertones of the work.
When I ask why they chose this story, producer James Fennemore says the team are “taking an Oxford story around the country”. The text is deeply rooted in Oxford, and so it seems apt to begin in Christ Church Meadow – one of Lewis Carroll’s main haunts – and to take the play from there to London and finally to Edinburgh. For the Oxford performances, the crew promise beanbags, couches, and rugs, and the audience are welcome to bring picnics along. Plus, with the Natural History Museum still closed for renovations, it might be your only chance to spot a dodo in Oxford this summer.
Alice in Wonderland will be playing on Christ Church Meadows (20-23 July), London’s Arcola Theatre (26-27 July) and at Edinburgh’s C Nova (31 July-26 August). Tickets are available here
