The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Linbury Studio - dance review

Kate Prince's contemporary reworking of Alice in Wonderland places characters in a Gothic mental asylum, where in-jokes and body-popping silliness abound
B-boy moves in fat suits: Ross Sands (Tweedle Dee) and Rowen Hawkins (Tweedle Dum) in The Mad Hatter's Tea Party / Picture: Tristram Kenton
©Tristram Kenton
Liz Hoggard22 December 2014

Lewis Carroll meets the disco aesthetic of Studio 54 in Kate Prince's contemporary reworking of Alice in Wonderland. Prince, who has already created two hit West End shows for her company, ZooNation (the Sondheim mash-up Into the Hoods and Some Like it Hip Hop), has been given the run of the ROH to create a hip hop children's show.

She turns Alice into an ensemble piece where the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Queen of Hearts et al are actually inmates in a Gothic mental asylum in the north of England.

As newly qualified psychotherapist Ernest (Tommy Franzen) attempts to restore sanity, inmates run rings around him.

It’s a clever conceit and yet the first half lags, despite engaging turns from Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (performing b-boy moves in fat suits), a stoner Cheshire Cat and a White Rabbit with OCD. You wonder if this really is the best way to explore the complexities of mental illness.

But the act closes with Franzen’s explosive solo. Hurling himself across the floor, literally bouncing off the furniture, he reminds us that this is a show about bodies in motion. By the time we return for the full Mad Hatter’s tea party, Prince is back in control, with the cast breaking and popping along the trestle table, spinning on their heads.

Adults will love the in-jokes (the songs are brilliant, witty pastiches of everything from funk and blues to the X Factor and Tim Buckley), while children will relish the sheer body-popping silliness.

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1/9

As the Royal Ballet perform Christopher Wheeldon’s own melting, lyrical take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the main house next door, it’s good to know hip hop has entered the building.

Until January 3 (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk). The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party will be live streamed for free on December 18.

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