This has nothing to do with Wonderland - Alice is the name of Harrogate Theatre's ghost, and the last time this intrepid little theatre commissioned a play the old girl was probably still in the audience.
But it is Harrogate Theatre's 100th birthday, and to mark the occasion writer Rony Robinson has been invited to contribute a drama celebrating the theatre's history. Robinson's new play is primarily made up of bits of old ones, but sampled and superimposed into a punchy, contemporary piece that feels something like an Essential Repertory Remix.
Everyone knows that all theatres are haunted, if only because wardrobe mistresses will always need someone to blame when the scissors go missing. No one is certain of Alice's identity, however. She may have been an actress, an usher or the theatre-founder's fancy friend. Whatever the case, she is reputed to have taken the most direct route from the top balcony to the stalls and most frequently manifests herself as a smell in the corridor.
Robinson's script is a neat set of variations on the theme of deja-vu, which opens spectacularly with an ending. This paradoxical piece of dramaturgy cleverly engineers a situation whereby, as the crew dismantle a show's scenery, Kate the stage manager volunteers to spend the night alone in the building.
Right on cue the theatre's spirits come drifting out of the woodwork, and, as snatches of hoary old staples such as Arnold Ridley's the Ghost Train, Coward's Still Life and Emlyn Williams's Someone Waiting swirl around her, Kate (earthily played by Nicola Bolton) finds herself experiencing the classic theatrical anxiety dream in which you are on stage, but don't know any of your lines.
It is a complex piece of writing that performs so many double twists that the plot does not always recover its balance. But the stagecraft of Rob Swain's production is so seamless and the ensemble playing so virtuosic that one is more than prepared to submit to its spell. Shelly Willetts in the title role cuts an imperious figure. An enchanting evening.
Until November 11. Box office: 01423 502116.
