Bubble's outdoor version of Alice in Wonderland is one of my favourite shows. If this sequel by the company doesn't have that production's giddy excitement, it is perhaps because the Old Royal Naval College is so much grander than the Wonderland setting of Greenwich Park.
Two other factors lessen the impact, and Bubble has control over neither. One is that by the time Lewis Carroll went through the looking glass he had given up any pretence of narrative and simply gone on a wild flight of the imagination. The other is the weather. On a balmy night, not only would the acoustics be better, but the slightly bitty feel of the enterprise would be less irritating. To really enjoy it you have to just let it flow over you, rather than worry about meaning and plot.
Some of the installation moments, when the promenading audience pass by goats or protesting bishops, are more interesting than the fully staged scenes. It is a pity the show couldn't have been staged as a simultaneous installation all over the college grounds with the audience wandering around as they pleased and constructing their own meanings.
But despite these failings it is a jolly, colourful evening with some great moments of outlandish fancy and, as Alice herself says, "a quantity of poetry". In the end the show is a demonstration of what one fabulous beast (the unicorn) tells another (Alice): "If you believe in me, I'll believe in you."
· Touring until August 15. Box office: 020-7237 1663.
