“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then,” says Alice in Alice in Wonderland. You might say the same of any stage show worth its salt. It should be a constant process of stirring and cooking that doesn’t end when the rehearsals and previews finish, but continues throughout the run.
For many companies – often the most interesting ones – a show is never actually finished. Companies such as Gecko and Complicite are likely to be working on a show and making changes right up until the very last performance. Not for them the kind of approach of some shows in the West End and on Broadway, when everything is locked down and remains pretty much the same from the press performance through to the final curtain – unless of course something goes wrong, or the cast try to liven up proceedings.
In fact, the press night only underlines the idea that a show is somehow finished, and reached a level of perfection that can’t be bettered or is as good as it is ever going to get. I don’t hold with that idea, but I do reckon that if performances are going to be billed as previews, then they should come with a hefty discount on the ticket price. Otherwise producers are having their cake and eating it.
I also reckon that all shows benefit from changes and reworkings. Which is why Julie Andrews’ proposed revival of My Fair Lady for the Sydney Opera House, which will attempt to replicate the 1956 production in which she starred, sounds like a really dull idea. We’ve all seen shows hampered long after their original success by choreography and stagings that might have been innovative in their day but now look hackneyed. Richard Eyre recently described transferring Mr Foote’s Other Leg from Hampstead to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, saying that part of the pleasure of a transfer was not just reworking a show for a different space, but the chance to revisit and gnaw away at all the bits you felt hadn’t worked during the original run.
One of the things often said about musicals is that they are not written but rewritten. They are so incredibly hard to get right, because of the many elements involved. I recall visiting backstage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, days before The Witches of Eastwick opened, and an entirely new song was being rehearsed. That kind of reworking goes on all the time: think Sunset Boulevard or Martin Guerre.
It’s certainly the case with wonder.land, which opened at the National Theatre earlier this month after a run in this summer’s Manchester international festival. In an interview, composer Damon Albarn said that the Manchester performances were a work in progress and only “45% finished” (which certainly wasn’t made clear to those paying top whack at the Palace theatre for tickets or to press who were invited to review the world premiere). But it’s good to report that while it’s still hugely flawed, the show is vastly more enjoyable than when I saw it in Manchester.
It’s a great idea to reimagine Alice for the digital age, and Moira Buffini’s lyrics are often both witty and wise. There are a couple of really terrific performances too, from Lois Chimimba as Aly, the sad, mixed-up teenager who creates an avatar, Alice, who is stolen by Anna Francolini’s headteacher, a demonic cross between Miss Trunchbull and Cruella de Vil on a particularly bad day.
But the elements of Albarn’s dullish score, Buffini’s book and Rufus Norris’s production, which employs substantial amounts of projection from 59 Productions (who have done brilliant work on stages from Katie Mitchell’s Waves to the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch), never coalesce in a satisfying way. It’s hard to really get a grip on what it’s about: family break-up? Bullying? Knowing who you are? Online identity theft? Horrid headteachers? Sometimes adding more doesn’t make for something richer, only more confusing.
It looks like a million dollars (you do wonder how much money has been flung at it to disguise the cracks) and if you are looking for a show with psychedelic wow-factor, this has undoubtedly got it. But it wouldn’t pass what I’ve heard Mark Kermode describe as the Pixar test, in which it is the special effects in a movie that the viewer notices, rather than the beating heart of the story that it’s telling.
Of course if the concept is flawed, no amount of tinkering around is going to fix it, as the NT’s The Light Princess proved. But wonder.land runs at the National until April 30 2016 and then in the summer heads to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. If there’s the will on the part of the National and all involved to work on it yet further, this may be a rabbit-hole whose possibilities can yet be realised.
