FREE THEATRE CHRISTCHURCH
  • ABOUT
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • A brief history...
    • Who We Are
    • The University Connection
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
  • HOME
  • WHATS ON
    • The Passionate Puritan
  • EDUCATION
    • Kids Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • PRODUCTIONS 1979 - present
    • The Cat Eleonore
    • The Deadbeat Opera
    • Babylon Berlin
    • Beggars Banquet
    • Woyzeck
    • The Axe
    • Endgame
    • Digitising Performance
    • Erewhon: Over the Range
    • A Summer Night's Dream
    • How Dare You
    • A Winter's Tale
    • Ars Acustica
    • Alice
    • The Black Rider
    • Frankenstein
    • The Mauricio Kagel Project
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • Kafka's Amerika
    • Ubu Nights >
      • Past Ubu Nights >
        • Ma Ubu Night
        • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
        • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
        • Frankenstein Ubu Night
        • Casablanca Ubu Night
        • Faust Ubu Night
        • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
        • Punk Ubu Night
        • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
        • Crossroads Ubu Night
        • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
        • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
        • Bowie Ubu Night
        • Warhol Ubu Night
        • Berlin Kabarette
        • Beat Ubu Night
        • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
        • David Lynch Ubu Night
        • Kafka Ubu Night
        • Tango Ubu Night
        • Ubu Ubu Night
        • Lovecraft Ubu Night
    • Canterbury Tales
    • The Soldier's Tale
    • Bluebeard's Castle >
      • Bluebeard's Castle credits
    • I Sing the Body Electric
    • Big Heads Protest
    • Hereafter
    • Passion, Pulse and Power
    • The Earthquake in Chile
    • Don Giovanni Invites you to Dinner
    • Doctor Faustus
    • The Marvellous Corricks >
      • Corricks - Credits
    • Distraction Camp
    • Remake
    • Ella and Susn
    • There and Back Again
    • Faust Chroma
    • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
    • Change Proposal
    • Faust Feast
    • Diana Down Under
    • Philoctetes >
      • Production Credits - Piloctetes
    • Fantasia
    • Christmas Shopping
    • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
    • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
    • Caucasian Chalk Circle
    • Samson Airline
    • Antigone
    • Kabarett Kabul
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • The Well Intentioned Wife
    • The Last Days of Mankind
    • Bakkhai / Diotek
    • Krapp's Last Tape
    • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
    • Comrade Savage
    • Love on a Bicycle
    • Crusoe: A Lapsarian Mass in Twelve Movements
    • Medea
    • Songs to the Judges
    • Resolution Island
    • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
    • The Empire Builders
    • States of Shock
    • Robinson Crusoe or: I That Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
    • Power
    • MedeaMaterial
    • Salome
    • Electra
    • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
    • Hamletmachine
    • Oresteia
    • A Respectable Wedding
    • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    • Cloudkiwiland
    • Double Act / Postponeless >
      • double act credits
    • Preversions
    • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
    • Red Cross & Takeaway
    • Lulu
    • Cowboy Mouth
    • The Meeting >
      • the meeting credits
    • Action / Tongues
    • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
    • A Letter from L
    • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
    • Free Theatre Christmas Show
    • The Ride Across Lake Constance
    • Electra
    • In Three Minds
    • The Rapist Over Suzannah
    • 1984: The Future Is Now
    • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
    • Leonce and Lena
    • Court Case: Free Theatre vs The Arts Centre
    • The Almost Free Theatre Kabernette
    • The Joffongract
    • King Lear
    • Kabarett
    • King Ubu
    • Black Cat Cabaret
    • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
    • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
    • Round Dance
    • Woyzeck
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • SUPPORT
  • CONTACT
  • CNZ application

Alice

"Evocative, intelligent and effective"
​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
3-19 May, 2018, The Gym, The Arts Centre
Production Credits
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".
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Audience responses

Thank 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.
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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.
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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. ​
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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.
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Views and Reviews

It'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. 

​ Evocative, Intelligent and Effective
Erin Harrington, Theatreview, 4 May 2018
Alice is no Sunday in the park with Sondheim.

​Part I: Alice big fun for cast, stimulating for some, perplexing for others
Chris Moore, The Press, 4 May, 2018​
...the true pleasure of going back to Alice was discovering a production that had matured and indeed blossomed since first night.

Part II: Second half of Alice musical 'truly outstanding
Chris Moore, The Press, 10 May, 2018
RDU Interview
​
7 May 2018
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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. 
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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!
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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
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  • ABOUT
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • A brief history...
    • Who We Are
    • The University Connection
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
  • HOME
  • WHATS ON
    • The Passionate Puritan
  • EDUCATION
    • Kids Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • PRODUCTIONS 1979 - present
    • The Cat Eleonore
    • The Deadbeat Opera
    • Babylon Berlin
    • Beggars Banquet
    • Woyzeck
    • The Axe
    • Endgame
    • Digitising Performance
    • Erewhon: Over the Range
    • A Summer Night's Dream
    • How Dare You
    • A Winter's Tale
    • Ars Acustica
    • Alice
    • The Black Rider
    • Frankenstein
    • The Mauricio Kagel Project
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • Kafka's Amerika
    • Ubu Nights >
      • Past Ubu Nights >
        • Ma Ubu Night
        • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
        • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
        • Frankenstein Ubu Night
        • Casablanca Ubu Night
        • Faust Ubu Night
        • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
        • Punk Ubu Night
        • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
        • Crossroads Ubu Night
        • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
        • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
        • Bowie Ubu Night
        • Warhol Ubu Night
        • Berlin Kabarette
        • Beat Ubu Night
        • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
        • David Lynch Ubu Night
        • Kafka Ubu Night
        • Tango Ubu Night
        • Ubu Ubu Night
        • Lovecraft Ubu Night
    • Canterbury Tales
    • The Soldier's Tale
    • Bluebeard's Castle >
      • Bluebeard's Castle credits
    • I Sing the Body Electric
    • Big Heads Protest
    • Hereafter
    • Passion, Pulse and Power
    • The Earthquake in Chile
    • Don Giovanni Invites you to Dinner
    • Doctor Faustus
    • The Marvellous Corricks >
      • Corricks - Credits
    • Distraction Camp
    • Remake
    • Ella and Susn
    • There and Back Again
    • Faust Chroma
    • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
    • Change Proposal
    • Faust Feast
    • Diana Down Under
    • Philoctetes >
      • Production Credits - Piloctetes
    • Fantasia
    • Christmas Shopping
    • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
    • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
    • Caucasian Chalk Circle
    • Samson Airline
    • Antigone
    • Kabarett Kabul
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • The Well Intentioned Wife
    • The Last Days of Mankind
    • Bakkhai / Diotek
    • Krapp's Last Tape
    • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
    • Comrade Savage
    • Love on a Bicycle
    • Crusoe: A Lapsarian Mass in Twelve Movements
    • Medea
    • Songs to the Judges
    • Resolution Island
    • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
    • The Empire Builders
    • States of Shock
    • Robinson Crusoe or: I That Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
    • Power
    • MedeaMaterial
    • Salome
    • Electra
    • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
    • Hamletmachine
    • Oresteia
    • A Respectable Wedding
    • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    • Cloudkiwiland
    • Double Act / Postponeless >
      • double act credits
    • Preversions
    • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
    • Red Cross & Takeaway
    • Lulu
    • Cowboy Mouth
    • The Meeting >
      • the meeting credits
    • Action / Tongues
    • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
    • A Letter from L
    • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
    • Free Theatre Christmas Show
    • The Ride Across Lake Constance
    • Electra
    • In Three Minds
    • The Rapist Over Suzannah
    • 1984: The Future Is Now
    • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
    • Leonce and Lena
    • Court Case: Free Theatre vs The Arts Centre
    • The Almost Free Theatre Kabernette
    • The Joffongract
    • King Lear
    • Kabarett
    • King Ubu
    • Black Cat Cabaret
    • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
    • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
    • Round Dance
    • Woyzeck
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • SUPPORT
  • CONTACT
  • CNZ application