The Paw Print

By Raina Suri, Staff Writer

Every fall, the Payton Players open their season with a major production, though the genre shifts from year to year. Last year, Payton’s resident theater company performed “Rose and the Rime,” a modern fairy tale retelling performed in the Black Box Theater. This year, the Players departed from the eerie, horror-like nature of “Rose” and instead adopted a new genre: surrealist comedy, presented through playwright André Gregory’s rendition of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Originally written in 1970 for Gregory’s avant-garde theater company, The Manhattan Project, the play digs into themes of psychedelics, the fleeting nature of childhood and the ridiculousness of the absurd. These ideas, along with the show’s structure, draw heavily from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” the classic tale of a girl who takes a tumble down a rabbit hole and enters Wonderland, a world governed by nonsense.

Despite its dreamlike premise, the play opens with a literal bang: a screaming, choral recitation of Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” the poem describing an imagined beast who is eventually struck dead. Poetry continues to thread through the show, including a melodic reading of “All in the golden afternoon…” the opening poem to “Alice in Wonderland,” a rapped rendition of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” and many other works by the same author. For those unfamiliar with Carroll, the play would have been a confusing whirlwind of retellings, combinations and subversions.

However, those who know the original plot of “Alice in Wonderland” will be delighted by the frequent character monologues by familiar faces like the White Queen and the Caterpillar. Once the confusion of the opening scene in the hall of doors settles, viewers can more easily connect this loud, brash production to Carroll’s dreamlike narrative, one that heightens the contrast between the fantastical nature of Wonderland and Alice’s oscillation between practical maturity and childlike wonder.

By the time Humpty Dumpty came onstage to deliver his dramatic speech from the top of the bright orange sun-shaped set piece, the audience was laughing at the surrealism of the situation and at the humor of not fully understanding what was happening. Coupled with the dedication of the actors to staying in character throughout the performance by using all their energy onstage, “Alice” was an incredible experience.

For a play as brash and non-conformist as “Alice,” the Players executed it spectacularly. From the costumes fit with personalized adornments to the well-constructed orange sun with rays of fabric extending to the rafters to the intense acting, the production of “Alice” was in line with the caliber of all performances put on by the Players and a strong display of their comedic and avant-garde acting talents.