Live stream review: Alice by Creation Theatre - taking online performance to a whole new level
09/08/2020
Creation Theatre has taken online live performance to a whole new level with its latest family show Alice.
Described as a virtual theme park, this is part interactive theatre, part style your own adventure, part video game and it is enjoyed from the comfort of your own living room.
Based on Lewis Carroll's famous stories of Alice in Wonderland and adapted by Zoe Seaton and Charlotte Keatley this has all the well-known characters and familiar scenes of the books.
It is imaginatively brought to life in the style of an old fashioned fairground with a combination of high tech wizardry including AI and good old fashioned theatre craft and entertainment.
Choose your story
We join Alice (Leda Douglas) via a Zoom call to be transported into her fantasy world. Fairground music sets the scene for the roller-coaster adventure to come and for the first part of the show you get to choose where you want go and explore.
A click on an icon takes you off to meet characters including the Mad Hatter, twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Mad March Hare in their Zoom rooms with their own stories and entertainment.
Don't dither in your choices though as you may miss bits.
The Mad Hatter (Dharmesh Patel), performs a puppet show using a hat designed as a theatre stage, Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Tom Richardson) 'perform' acrobatics with the help of a strategically placed mirror and the Mad March Hare gets everyone synchronised swimming and dancing.
During the interactive elements, you get glimpses of your fellow audience members who are taking part. You can have your video switched off but joining in is part of the fun.
When the Queen of Hearts (Vera Chok) turns up you have to be on your guard, she likes to be flattered and her mood can change for the worse in a heartbeat.
Once you've explored the individual rooms the audience comes back together onto the same Zoom call for some of the classic scenes of the books: Alice drinking the potions which make her large and small, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, the croquet match and the courtroom presided over by the Queen.
The croquet match is particularly inventive and fun because you get to take part in a computer game style version complete with designing your own hedgehog.
In contrast, is it a simple card trick which determines the verdict in the courtroom (do have a pack of playing cards handy).
And that is Alice in a Madhatter's teacup. The sets have become more sophisticated, the technology and level of interaction more advanced but there is still a nice sugary slice of good old-fashion illusion and entertainment to go with it.
Fun for all the family, Alice is around 80 minutes long and there are performances up until 30 August. You can find more details and buy tickets on Creation Theatre's website.
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