Alice at the Asylum

INSPIRED BY LEWIS CARROLL’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND

By Lydia Vie
Directed by Anastasia Revi

Asylum Chapel, London, December 2023
Electric Theatre, Guildford, January 2024
Old Fire Station, Oxford, February 2024
Bagion, Athens, Greece, February 2024

Theatre Lab Company’s new production is an innovative re-telling of the beloved classic story, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland accompanied by an original live musical score.

A story blending the old and the new, classic and contemporary, reality and imagination, all coming together in the quest to understand our identity. Set in contemporary London, Mr. Rose, a property investor, believes he has struck gold when he buys a new building, the Asylum, a former Victorian asylum. As he prepares to demolish the building, he decides to pay a visit to the site, only to find that it is not empty as expected. Here, he meets Alice, the last patient of the Asylum before it was forced to shut down in 1873. Curious and impatient, Mr. Rose does all he can to get Alice out of the Asylum and proceed with his dream of gentrification. Alice, however, has other ideas. It’s time for tea, you see.

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), was born at All Saints’Vicarage in Daresbury, Cheshire, to a family of high-church Anglicans. He was an author, poet, mathematician and photographer. He is known for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871), and his talent with word
play, logic, and fantasy. Carroll had lifelong connections with the
cities of London, Guildford and Oxford. The enchanting Victorian Asylum Chapel in South London was once a place of sanctuary for those in need. The social function of this haunting, gothic space echoes the message of this play in which audiences will
meet some of Lewis Carroll’s famous characters as they take on the
unsuspecting Mr Rose.

At St. Mark’s Church in Maida Vale, recently destroyed by a fire, Carroll first met the Liddell family whose youngest daughter, Alice, was the inspiration for his novel. He spent much of his life in Oxford where he studied and worked at Christ Church College and wrote Alice in Wonderland. His resting place is in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.He spent time in the city visiting his sisters and preached at St Mary’s Church. The Alice Through The Looking Glass statue can be seen in the castle grounds and the statue of Alice with her sister, watching the rabbit go down the hole, is in Millmead by the river.The production opened at The Electric Theatre on Lewis Carroll’s 192nd birthday.

Credits

Additional Creative and Production Team (Greece)
Lighting Design|Alexandros Politakis & Katerina-Maria Saltaoura
Photography and Video | Kostas Kaklis
Translation/Surtitles |Sevi Filippidou

Press

London-based Theatre Lab Company’s latest show, Alice at the Asylum, directed by Anastasia Revi, has moments of captivating beauty, stunning costumes, arresting tableaux and an intriguing script…Time, and timelessness, are arrestingly conceptualised within the image of a bowl of sugar, sweet clouds of time that are blown across the stage in a miasma of saccharine beauty.
NEWBURY TODAY

70 minutes of the bizarre and the surreal; a spectacle of delights…There are so many great moments in this production. The live music, provided by Hades (composer/musician/performer) on electric guitar, is a perfect accompaniment to the action, adding to the contemporary setting.The vocals by the Wonderland cast are excellent too, offering beautiful harmonies and lyrical playfulness. The choreographed movements of the White Rabbit (Christina Maycea) and the Caterpillar (Rujenne Green) are creatively characterised and synchronised to perfection. There are some interesting choices in the direction, use of set and the costumes (designed by Lisa Lach- Nielsen).
EVERYTHING THEATRE