Diving into the 1901 Club just nearby Waterloo is not exactly like falling down a rabbit hole, but the press preview for the launch of a CD album ahead of the summer revival of Will Todd’s opera was certainly a startling escape from the harassed world of the commuters of SE1. While ‘another hundred people got onto their trains’, your reviewer exchanged pleasantries with a very debonair Mad Hatter and a droll White Rabbit. Tarts with hearts (baked) were scattered temptingly around the different levels of this charming period building, and we could explore the cluttered, over-furnished Edwardian rooms at leisure….. I had rather hoped to be accosted by a Red Queen or rescued by a White Knight or even to have shared a chaise longue with the Caterpillar, but in the end I was happy to settle for a demure performance by Fflur Wyn of Alice’s main number, ‘I flew high in my dreams’, with the composer at the piano. This had a touch of Sondheim at his most lyrically expansive – in fact it made me think of that lovely evocative one-off list number, ‘I remember’, from Evening Primrose – before growing into something more like the final ‘garden’ number from Candide (indeed it actually returns as the finale of the album).
After listening to the CD at home I can confirm the influence of Sondheim across the board in melodic figuration, harmonic sequencing and word setting (an excellent sharp and witty naturalist libretto by Maggie Gottlieb) None of this is a criticism by the way! There are however many other different delights about this consistently attractive and endearing score: delicious smoochy jazz and Latin inflections, deft references to the Gershwin of Porgy and Bess, and some snappy, acid Gilbertian patter sitting especially well in the register of the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts who sounds as though she may be the sister of Miss Trunchbull. The creative team has recognized the symmetry between the world of Humpty-Dumpty and the world of Topsy-Turvy, while also updating the story with contemporary references to give all ages some easy-to-access points of contact. Musically, the most memorable individual numbers are the character pieces for all the various animals, especially the effortlessly stylish, arch, and witty ‘Wonderland Blues’, sung by Caterpillar-Keel Watson. This is a well-produced album, sung by the original cast and played with an 11-piece band, providing lots of colour and solo detail along the way. The sound has an excellent bloom on it and a wide dynamic range.
Originally produced in 2013, this Alice will return this year for outdoor performance at Holland Park Opera, and then go to Wilderness Festival, before coming into the Linbury Theatre at Covent Garden. I didn’t know it at all before listening to this cast album, but on the strength of that I shall certainly be inviting my godson along in August. Opera aimed at children is, like panto, notoriously difficult to bring off successfully over a whole evening. Yet this setting sounds the real deal: there is enough that is knowing, allusive, witty and archly subversive for the adults and the older kids, while still offering plenty of old-fashioned magic, surprise, splashy colour and wide-eyed special effects for the under-10s (and for those of us still secretly in touch with who we were then..). Sassy, inventive but never condescending, this opera deserves once again to become one of the outdoor hits of what we hope will be a long, shimmering, hot summer of 2015.
