Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a classic tale by Lewis Carroll that follows the titular character’s adventure in the topsy-turvy world of Wonderland. She encounters an eclectic group of creatures with frenetic energy that powers this chaos-filled journey where any attempt to have a logical and coherent thought, is washed away by the pure madness of the realm.

I have to preface this with that I was not fully prepared for this show being more catered towards kids with the script and with the choices made. I did see the show a second time with that renewed understanding and to also witness the understudy cast. I tend to go see a show more than once to fully solidify my thoughts and I always try to go see understudy shows to see the hard work they put in.

Yağmur Elçin does a wonderful job in creating a very whimsical show with characters that are over the top and bursting with energy. At first, I didn’t enjoy what I was watching, but I’m not the intended audience and had to really change my perspective. A lot of the overacting and the larger than life choices were meant to captivate kids and by word did it work. Having a character meet after the show was also a great decision in engaging a young audience.

Here is me being a broken record again, but simple set design works so well in so many cases and in this instance, it just works incredibly well for introducing folks to theatre. This is the one time that I wish there was a little more done to really transport us into this wild world. Something that I wish was used was some more fantastical colour! The show, though flush with colour, lacked some whimsy in some bright colours and played with either a neutral, almost subdued palette. It played an odd parallel with the sets which were brightly painted and grounded a lot of the characters, even though a lot of them are fairly chaotic in nature.

There were so many great standouts in this show that I must applaud the understudies. The understudies were some of my favourite moments and I found myself enjoying the show a bit more with their performance; however, that may be biased because of the frame of mind I went in with. Andrea Turner as Alice did a spectacular job at portraying a curious child in a land where the rules she learned don’t apply at all. Alice is very much the anchor to the whole show and Turner did well in keeping the audience engaged. Thea Tull as the White Rabbit also did a wonderful job at making this overly anxious character readable. Problems arise when a character is extremely stressed and time crunched, actors tend to rush lines and we lose a lot of words. Tull kept that same energy, but delivered lines that were clear and concise that kept the storytelling rolling.

UOTC did a fantastic job at creating a show that was perfect in welcoming young theatre-goers to a literary classic. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy the show, I can appreciate the show for what it was intended to be: a show for kids.