Lewis Carroll’s Twisted “Alice in Wonderland” Takes on FSU’s Black Box Theatre

What a way to conclude Homecoming weekend! This play takes on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and completely blows it out of the water. Doing this in

the Black Box theater means a single set, limited moving of items and a creative mind. The director and the actors performed this phenomenally, using every part of the set perfectly! I’m aware that there are directions, but there is always room for the production to change and adjust to fit what is available.

When walking into the theater, there was haunting music that played up to the minute the show started. The lights dropped fast, and the next thing on stage was Alice, played by Zoie Collins, being swung in a chair by two of the other actors. The first five minutes were wordless, just eerie music as Alice played on her bed. Next, she sees a light, representing the rabbit hole. She follows this to under her bed and then she is falling through. This is done by flashing lights and Collins making motions of falling down a long hole.

She first meets the White Rabbit, the first creepy and unsettling character that moves continuously and speaks in a way that sends shivers down the spine. As the scene changes, the next room or place comes to Alice through the use of light transition rather than set movement. The Caterpillar appears, made of four cast members moving with the fifth acting as the head. There isn’t a connection, just other cast moving with the Caterpillar. They greet Alice, warning her not to lose her temper.

After this, she meets the Duchess who comes out of the bed with a cook and a servant. She speaks in verse, talking nonsense about pepper in soup and yelling at her “baby” which is just a doll. Alice runs into the Cheshire Cat, made of umbrellas with eyes painted on, one actress holding an accordion as the mouth and another holding a scarf for the tail. Now the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Door Mouse arrive for tea on a “beach” where they use a cart filled with sand for candy and tea. Then Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb test Alice on her smarts through the recitation of a silly poem, a story, and asking a question to see if she’s decisive. Finally, we have made it to the garden to play croquet with the queens. There is later a trial for a card accused of eating the Queen of Hearts’ tarts where Alice stands up for the card reading the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. When the poem ends, Alice is left alone, the crazy cast has slowly backed away from her intense reading. When she finishes reading, she looks around her and then notices something in the distance. Alice yells, the lights drop, and the play ends on a cliff, much like the book.

The cast was phenomenal in these roles. The creepy bounce to the White Rabbit, the lip-licking from the Mad Hatter, the laughing of the twins, along with many other small touches that made the play feel like a weird dream added to the words so much. These people are extremely talented and have an amazing ability to turn on the dark side of themselves. And I truly hope they try to bring The Looking Glass to end the two parts because I would love to see Zoie as Alice again and find myself back in a weird dreamland with this amazing cast.