"Evocative, intelligent and effective"
Erin Harrington, Theatreview
Erin Harrington, Theatreview
This is kinda Lewis Carroll... You know he fell on the ice of a pond and he broke his watch one day and he never got it fixed. And he said, that's what happened to him. He said, as long as his watch was broken he could always stay in this world you know, that he invented for him and for her, so...
Tom Waits
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3-19 May, 2018, The Gym, The Arts Centre
Childhood is the paradise we all appear to have lost, but where none of us has actually ever been. The yearning for this lost wonderland is expressed in Lewis Carroll‘s Alice tales and in the popular success that they still have so many years later. But the childish fantasies that we find here also harbour beneath all their alluring whimsy the bitter cruelties that are part of our childhood experience, which we tend to erase from our memories. In Robert Wilson and Tom Waits‘ Alice these Victorian fantasies are replayed as bittersweet realities of the actual lives of the author Dodgson and his muse Alice and are revealed as still being alive today in our own minds.
Alice combines and mixes two stories: one is about the Victorian fun fair Wonderland with its surface innocence; the other is about Charles Dodgson, the inhibited and speech impaired clergyman and mathematician at Christ Church College Oxford and his erotic dream life. The fun fair shows its darker underside and reveals a surreal freak show. Tom Waits called it a "fever dream" or a "time poem" with "adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults". 
Audience responsesThank you for an awesome experience last night. Thoroughly enjoyed an outstanding show. Go treat yourself to this, it's absolutely brilliant. Can totally recommend Free Theatre Christchurch's production of ALICE (Tom Waits) - New Zealand Premiere. Trippy AF. 
A wonderful performance, well done, you have nailed it again. Loved it. Just enough of Alice to be recognisable with the quirky touches we've come to expect and enjoy from the marvellous Free Theatre. The sheep monologue/rhyme were hilarious and amusing end was perfect. Keep being awesome guys. 
Thanks all you lovely and talented people. We don't know how but you keep bringing the goods. Such quality and goodness. Thinking there should be a public holiday in the name of Free Theatre. Thank you Free Theatre for a magnificent performance. Your complex characters, the music and the sets are all so very well done. 
An amazing way to experience Tom Waits' Alice. Get along to this if you can! Strongly recommend getting along to this! Only 4 nights left next week! I'm not even going to try and describe it ....JUST GO! Awesome work Free Theatre Christchurch Our yesterday evening at “Alice” (Tom Waits) play. One word to describe the play - brilliant! This is amazing! Bravo Free Theatre Christchurch! Loved it tonight! So good! Free Theatre you are brilliant ✨ Alice 🖤♥️🐇👑🐛🎩☕️⏱ Such an awesome show guys. Enjoyed it so much, made my trip to Christchurch all the more amazing. |
Views and ReviewsIt's an engrossing production with some delightful and truly satisfying moments.... The overall effect is that we are never sure of what is inside or outside, what is the subject or what is the image, or how reality or fantasy are being stitched together. It's evocative, intelligent and effective.... It's broken-down musical architecture that's held together by cigarette smoke and twine. I'd have happily stayed listening to them all night, and it's a pity we don't get to applaud them properly at the end. It's clear that these Waits/Wilson collaborations are an ideal fit for Free Theatre's philosophy and aesthetic project. Alice is no Sunday in the park with Sondheim. ...the true pleasure of going back to Alice was discovering a production that had matured and indeed blossomed since first night. RDU Interview 
A phenomenal performance... Everyone in Christchurch! Go and see this wonderful Tom Waits musical, Alice. Illuminating and wonderful! Proud to support the Free Theatre Christchurch we are so lucky to have you. 
Wow!!! Amazing review - but then again I'm not surprised as it was an amazing performance! Agree. And loved the musicianship too. Perfect mood and accompaniment! 
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Did I mention that it was brilliant? This is worth travelling to Flatland for...a dickie-aroundie favourite Tom Waits musical/album of mine rendered in perfect creepy antihomage to m mmmm mm...Mr Dodgson...with the cleverest use of props/set/lights, phenomenal live music and beautiful renditions of the songs in sweet melodic ungravelly unTom glory 
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"Alice is adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults. It's a maelstrom or fever-dream, a tone poem, with torch songs and waltzes...an odyssey in dream logic and nonsense".
Tom Waits
