Lookingglass Alice

by Dan Bacalzo
TheaterMania.com
February 13, 2007

Daring acrobatics, fabulous costumes, and a genuine sense of wonder combine to make Lookingglass Alice a treat for both kids and adults. Adapted and directed by David Catlin for Chicago's acclaimed Lookingglass Theatre Company, this delightful production is now at the New Victory as part of its national tour.

Familiarity with Lewis Carroll's original stories is useful, but not absolutely necessary, as the piece definitely stands on its own merits. Lookingglass Alice skillfully combines elements from both of the author's well-known novels. The titular character falls down the rabbit hole as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but the basic structure of the piece is taken from Through the Looking Glass, with its chessboard analogies and Alice's desire to transform from pawn to queen.

On her journey, Alice encounters characters from both novels -- including the Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, March Hare, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dee. The Red Queen from the second novel also takes on characteristics of The Queen of Hearts from the first, including uttering the "Off with her head" line. In addition, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) makes a few appearances, most notably at the beginning and end of the show.

A talented company of five actors bring the varied characters to life. Lauren Hirte plays Alice, while Larry DiStasi, Anthony Fleming III, Doug Hara, and Tony Hernandez embody all the other roles, including female ones such as the Red and White Queens. Hirte brings the right combination of politeness, pragmatism, and playfulness to her interpretation of Alice. DiStasi is a clear audience favorite, particularly for his endearing turn as the White Knight.

All five deftly handle the show's circus acts, choreographed by Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi. Hirte performs the majority of the aerial maneuvers, while Hernandez' towering Red Queen walks across the stage on stilts and DiStasi wheels about on a unicycle. Additionally, Fleming, Hara, and Hernandez are brilliant and athletic as a three-man caterpillar. One of the most stunning moments, though, is Humpty Dumpty's fall, which is simple yet gasp-inducing.

Catlin has come up with several ingenious ways of conveying the story, beginning with a stage illusion at the top of the show that has the audience peering into a looking glass and seeing a mirror image that's a bit different from what they might expect. Still, there are a few small missteps. The Mad Hatter's tea party scene goes on a bit too long, and Fleming sometimes screeches his lines (particularly as the March Hare) in an annoying manner.

Mara Blumenfeld has crafted a number of eye-popping costumes, particularly for the Red Queen. Dan Ostling's industrial set design doesn't try to create a traditional-looking Wonderland. Rather, its bare bones quality emphasizes the magic of the theater, particularly with its trap doors that allow for some of the more fantastic special effects. Christine Binder's occasionally blinding lighting and the terrific sound design by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman also make significant contributions.

While much of the play's action focuses on spectacle, the production never loses sight of the story it wants to tell. Alice's journey is not simply about moving from one wacky encounter to the next. It's about growing up, and Alice's final interaction with Dodgson is tinged with a melancholy air that signifies his letting go of this young girl who has accepted the weight of responsibility for her own life.

No Humpty Dumpty

by Naomi Siegel
The Star Ledger
January 21, 2007

Now this is theater!

Bless the McCarter Theatre Center for importing "Lookingglass Alice" from Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company to Princeton.

David Catlin took Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" and "Alice in Wonderland" and forged them into a show that's part play, part circus. All the familiar characters are here: The Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, Humpty Dumpty, Queens both Red and White -- and, of course, Alice, played with delightful fresh-scrubbed innocence by Lauren Hirte.

Hirte doesn't just sit around while phantasmagorical events occur around her. She does a number of startling gymnastic feats on a hoop high above stage. Then the diminutive miss must hold a grown man in her arms, and carry another on her shoulders.

She isn't required, however, to carry the whole show on those shoulders. The other cast members each play at least a half-dozen roles. Anthony Fleming III, Doug Hara and Tony Hernandez move together beautifully to make the Caterpillar seem like a single unit, but the way they speak and sound as if they're one voice may be an even bigger achievement. Larry DiStasi has many amusing moments as both the frustrated White Queen and the loquacious White Knight.

These performers, too, must endure physical tests that would place many of us in month-long traction. They unicycle and march across 16 folding chairs that could trip up even the most expert jogger.

What Catlin has devised could oxymoronically be described as highly disciplined anarchy. How he engineers Humpty Dumpty's great fall is breathtakingly staged and bravely executed. Yet Catlin hasn't neglected the whimsy in the text. Carroll's clever wordplay is here, especially in a delicious pun that involves an eggplant.

It all takes place on a mostly bare stage, though it's soon littered with eggs, folding chairs and a sheaf of papers. To make Alice small after her "Drink Me" adventure, everything becomes oversized, including a ball of yarn bigger than any discovered in the Collier Brothers' apartment.

Sometimes Mara Blumenfeld's costumes are simple; a couple of rabbit ears stuck into a bowler hat does it for the March Hare. Other times, she gets elaborate; one officious queen is clad in a luxurious blood red dress that measures about half the height of the stage.

One could call this "experimental theater," but that term doesn't do justice to Catlin. After all, "experimental" suggests a trial-and-error process that's still continuing. Catlin has already experimented and succeeded.

At Friday's opening, the audience was applauding more frequently than they do at a hit Broadway musical. There, they're programmed to clap because a song has ended; here, the astounding feats made them spontaneously burst into applause. During the curtain calls, many "Ahhhhed!" -- astonished to see that only four men had been backing up Alice. Weren't there at least a dozen entering and exiting with such ease?

Even the seating arrangement is atypical. Attendees will be placed in the orchestra or balcony, or ensconced in one of 150 seats on stage. Good thing Catlin's staging allows for extra seats. They'll be needed to accommodate the hordes who'll rush to see this amazing production.

Lookingglass Alice - "Oh Wow!"

by Lee Hartgrave
Beyond Chron - San Francisco's Alternative Daily
August 15, 2008

The Actors are not only extremely talented, but they also perform death defying feats. Forget “Cirque de Soliel” – this company performs miracles.

Lookingglass Alice pretty much follows the story of Alice in Wonderland. You remember how that goes, don’t you? Well, in case you don’t here is a refresher. Alice looks in a mirror and walks through it. A huge curtain suddenly disappears as she walks onto the other side of the stage. As the curtain goes away, we are startled to see another audience on the other side of the stage. It was as if we were looking at ourselves. What a stunning and clever device this was. And it was probably the most dramatic moment that I have ever witnessed in a Theater.

Alice sees a bottle with a label on it that reads, “Drink Me”. She does. That could be a bad thing or a good thing because the next thing that happens is that she meets the enormous Red Queen who promises Alice that she will fulfill her wish of becoming a Queen if she can pass through several boxes of a Chess board. From then on Alice meets several of Carroll’s bizarre characters.

At times you can’t exactly tell what Alice has done to finally become a Queen – but heck, who cares? Absorbing and inventive is putting it mildly. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before. This play with music is a soaring achievement that fascinates from beginning to end.

The entire play, thanks to the marvelous acting and gymnastics filled with mischievous high-spirited fun. Your attention is ecstatically absorbed, pulling you into an imagined world.

Listen! Hush! – And do be wary. Anything can happen – and it does! Who are these SuperStars that act in startling ways? Drum roll please! They are Lauren Hirte (Alice) who is just amazing; Jesse J. Perez is very, very cool as the Red Queen, Tweedle Dum, Caterpillar among others; Lawrence E. Distasi is truly gifted and daring as White Knight, and White Queen and others; Kevin Douglas (White rabbit, Mad Hatter, Caterpillar & Others will daze and dazzle you; Anthony Fleming (Chesire Cat, Caterpillar, Tweedle Dee, March Hare & Others is Delightfully comic.

David Catlin – Adaptor/Director/Artistic Director/Ensemble Member has created a Grade 'A' marvel! Don Ostling’s scenic Design sizzles! Mara Blumenfeld (Costume Designer) helps create that sensory high! Ray Nardelli (Co-Sound Designer certainly made this play ‘swing’! And Andre Pluess (Co-Composition. Co-Sound Design) along with Nardelli made the evening thrilling and spectacular. It would be great if they would tour to San Francisco.

Believe me this “Alice” will hit you with hurricane force. If you don’t find this play one of the best entertaining evenings ever, then maybe you should go down the Rabbit Hole!

RATING: FOUR GLASSES OF CHAMPAGNE!!!! (highest rating)

Copyright © 2008 Lee Hartgrave, Beyond Chron

Acrobatics, whimsy blend as 'Alice' returns

by Hedy Weiss
Chicago Sun-Times

Magic. Pure, unadulterated magic. And you might as well add this: Endlessly witty, rashly whimsical and awash in nerve-jangling daring.

What's more, if you have no more patience for riddles, here's the key: Whether you move backward or forward in time, possess answers to life's nonsensical philosophical questions or not, or have kids in tow (or just yourself), failure to catch a performance of "Lookingglass Alice" means missing a rare chance for summer fun. In fact, the best short vacation you can plan is a trip down the shape-shifting, time-warping, mind-altering rabbit hole so memorably conjured by writer Lewis Carroll (a k a Charles Dodgson) for his favorite young muse, Alice Liddell.

Lookingglass Theatre's production -- which debuted here early in 2005, sold out during several extensions and earlier this year toured to New York, Philadelphia and Princeton, N.J. -- is back home at the company's Water Tower Water Works space. And it looks and sounds better than ever, with three of the five performers from the original cast (Lauren Hirte, Anthony Fleming III and Lawrence E. DiStasi) still doing eye-popping work, and two new additions (Kevin Douglas and Jesse J. Perez) goosing things terrifically.

Adapted and directed by David Catlin, whose masterful blend of storytelling, circus and choreographic panache is custom-made for this material, the show features the most ingenious, playful work from every contributor. That includes designers Dan Ostling (sets), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes, whose egg-beater helmet for the White Knight is a prize-winner all by itself) and Chris Binder (action-packed lighting). Composers Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, along with soundman Ray Nardelli, put a special accent in every tango and waltz. Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi has devised richly original circus choreography, and Scott Osgood has engineered rigging with truly life-or-death ramifications.

"Lookingglass Alice" is, above all, a unique coming-of age-story -- one in which Alice's perceptions, desires and emotions undergo the most puzzling and contradictory alterations as she moves confusingly but unavoidably from girlhood to womanhood. And Hirte, a tiny, luminous, amazingly strong 26-year-old (who looks not a day older than 12) has claimed this role as her own from the start -- stamping it not only with her remarkably fearless gymnastic and circus skills, but using her unaffected, altogether beguiling (though never sweet) spirit to give it heart.

For sheer mischief, mayhem and madness there are the four men who play countless roles: DiStasi as the reckless, self-deflating, unicycle-riding White Knight; Fleming as an impossibly devilish, high-flying Cheshire Cat; Perez as a campy Red Queen with motor-mouth Spanish, and the remarkable actor-dancer Douglas as a Humpty Dumpty who risks life and limb at every performance.

Finally, there are those folding chairs that pop out of a trap door like so many slices of toast from a toaster. But as I said at the start: Miss this at your own peril.

Wondrous worlds collide in 'Alice'

by Hedy Weiss
Chicago Sun-Times
February 15, 2005

If you really think about it, there is no better metaphor for Alice's adventures in Wonderland than what happens when you take a seat in the theater. After all, what you see onstage is real, and at the same time it is not at all real. And while the actors are flesh-and-blood, they seem to possess the ability to transform themselves into the most amazing shapes. Commoners become royalty with just a cardboard crown. And if you extend the term theater to include the circus, things get curiouser and curiouser still. Height knows no bounds on stilts, and those with the fearlessness and skill can soar through the air on nothing but a length of rope.

It may be for just these reasons that the members of the Lookingglass Theatre ensemble have returned to Lewis Carroll's Victorian era classic more than once during their history. And while I missed their earliest versions, I can attest to the marvelous flights of fancy, athletic enchantment, visual pleasures -- the sheer goofiness and even the subtle whiff of wistfulness -- that permeate their wildly imaginative new "Lookingglass Alice." Superbly adapted and directed by David Catlin, it opened over the weekend at Lookingglass' Water Tower Water Works home.

Catlin is really the first director who has found a way to utilize all the special features designed into the Water Tower space -- its towering ceiling, its deep traps and its fitness for complex rigging. In addition, he has found a way to exploit all aspects of Carroll's storytelling and nonsense poetry -- tapping its lyricism, playfulness, elusive braininess and seductive sense of disorientation. Bridging the worlds of childhood and adulthood, it evokes that strange instability that comes with the move from innocence to experience.

The tipoff to just how ingenious and engaging Catlin's "Lookingglass Alice" will turn out to be comes early on -- after the audience has filed into the darkness to find that they are seated on either side of a black hole of sorts. Hanging stage center is a large gilded mirror, and before we know it, Alice (the utterly beguiling, multitalented Lauren Hirte) and her creator, Charles Dodgson (a k a Lewis Carroll, played here by Lawrence E. DiStasi), cross into each other's worlds. A creative thunderclap occurs. And with one great sweep of a curtain all the mechanics of a stage are laid bare and the instruments of invention set in motion for Alice's journey of self-discovery.

In addition to Hirte (a tiny, beautiful, tremendously strong gymnast with a breathtaking mastery of aerial ballet skills and a natural acting style that makes Alice's innocence seem entirely genuine), it is up to a team of four actors, working like Olympic relay racers, to portray the entire population of Wonderland. You may remember Anthony Fleming III best as the coolest Cheshire Cat ever; Tony Hernandez as a forbidding Queen of Hearts (and taller than a Trump spire when perched on stilts); DiStasi as the wackiest of all unicycle-riding White Knights, and Doug Hara as a Humpty Dumpty who takes such a staggeringly dangerous fall that you can only rejoice that Northwestern Hospital is just a block away. And they are just as adept at becoming human croquet balls or a caterpillar.

The splendor of Dan Ostling's set design, Mara Blumenfeld's invariably brilliant costumes, Chris Binder's dazzling lights, and a galvanic crew greatly enhance the storytelling (which might benefit from a 10-minute trim). But this trip down the rabbit hole is nothing short of "brillig."