Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland reviewed: Magical evening at The Royal Ballet

The excited buzz in the auditorium was entirely appropriate. We last saw Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice in 2014 so we expected the best. 

The company is bursting at the seams with top class dancers, a lot of them on show at Wednesday’s opening night. Lauren Cuthbertson is an entirely Royal Ballet product from her step and hop kiddy days to title roles, then there was Edward Watson’s White Rabbit, Laura Morera’s Queen of Hearts and Steven McRae as The Mad Hatter. Federico Bonelli nearly walked away with the whole show in the bit part of The Knave of Hearts. 

Could dance maker Wheeldon ask for more? Apparently, yes. The evening actually belonged to Bob Crowley’s sensational designs, taking us from the opening at Alice’s cosy middle-class home to the fantasy of Wonderland. 

Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington’s huge projections took over the action time and again as Cuthbertson battled to tell us the story in the old fashioned way. She is a beautiful dancer, born to add her creative spirit to the art form we love, but drenched by stage-filling effects. 

McRae’s Madhatter’s Tea Party featured his expertise in tap dancing and refreshingly there were no scene changes nor massive, theatre filling projections to interrupt. 

Cuthbertson is able to get through some choreography without being obliterated by technology, Romany Pajdak’s sleepy Dormouse ends up in the tea pot and all is well. The last of the three acts is probably the best staged. Morera’s Queen of Hearts, dressed in vermilion and ordering heads to roll all over the place, performs a slapstick party piece in the courtroom that rightly brings the house down. 

The game of croquet played by the queen, the Duchess (Gary Avis) and Alice with flamingos tucked under their arms is one of the best bits of madcap staging I have seen for a long time. Romance blossoms between Alice and her adoring Knave and when reality finally kicks in they all live happily ever after. And who can complain about that? Not me.

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND 

The Royal Ballet Company

Royal Opera House, London WC2

(Tickets: 020 7304 4000; £5-£125)