Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 12 April 2011, and touring

THERE’S a real sense of occasion at Scottish Ballet first nights these days, and for Ashley Page’s Alice the air is so full of excitement you could bottle it and tie on a ‘Drink Me’ label.

The excitement iturns out to be justified. Page has succeeded in pulling a (white) rabbit out of the hat [enough Alice puns already!] with a production which melds all its elements – book, choreography, music, design and company – into a thoroughly satisfying whole.

Tama Barry as the Mad Hatter, Amy Hadley as the Dormouse and Victor Zarallo as the March Hare in Ashley Page’s Alice (photograph by Andrew Ross).

The music is Robert Moran’s commissioned score; it may not be to everyone’s taste (the composer describes it as “lunatic fringe music”) but it works hand-in-hand with the dance to tell the story, which is what ballet music is supposed to do.

Page and his regular designer, Antony McDonald, have once again peeled back the layers of a well known story to expose its rich, strange roots. Framed within the device of an old camera lens into which Sophie Martin’s Alice, bored waiting for The Reverend Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll (Erik Cavallari) to take another photograph, falls, it is a perfect evocation of Carroll’s dreamlike Wonderland, a place in which the conventions of the Victorian adult world are misunderstood, sometimes wilfully, sometimes not, by two lonely outsiders, a child and a mathematician.

The design and costumes are delightful, drawing on Tenniel and adding McDonald’s trademark playful touches, but it’s the dance, the dance, always the dance. Owen Thorne’s Jabberwock (channelling a young Rupert Everett), Luke Ahmet’s tango-dancing Caterpillar, and Christopher Harrison’s punk-haired Knave of Hearts deserve a particular mention for showing remarkable development over the past year, but the whole company is putting its heart into the show. There’s a sense of real enjoyment, too – they make it look like fun.

Page’s choreography has sometimes tended to be complex for the sake of complexity, but in Alice he’s created a calling card for his departure next year – what company wouldn’t want work of this calibre?

He’s also showing Scottish Ballet off, putting the company through its paces to attract an able successor. The result is a show which would surely have had the real Charles Dodgson on his feet cheering with the rest of the audience.

Alice is at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 27-30 April 2011, and His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 11-14 May 2011.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

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