Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (often styled as Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass) is a 2001 stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass. It was written by Adrian Mitchell and first produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK.
Mitchell's play holds the distinction for being the most comprehensive stage adaptation of Carroll's two Alice books yet made, keeping the endings of both novels intact and only minor changes made for theatrical staging reasons. It has a run time of one hour 40 minutes to two hours. The play in English is available to licence worldwide, for theatre performances through Concord Theatricals (in a variation using a more limited set, and smaller 16 person cast, as opposed to the original production's 20) Like the novels it adapts, Mitchell's play is an example of surreal humour and an exploration of dreams in childhood done in a whimsical way.
The original 2001 RSC production was filmed in 2002, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, and featured Katherine Heath as Alice. The play has since been presented at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2010, with set designs by Simon Higlett. In 2014, it was presented by Stamford Shakespeare Company, for the first time in an outdoor theatre setting, at Tolethope Hall in Rutland, UK. In 2022, it was produced at Jersey Arts Centre, Jersey, in association with the french company ARTcomedia, with a scaled down cast of 13.
Mitchell's play differs from most stage adaptations of Alice in adapting both novels and not having the stories as one single combined dream, but as two separate dreams split over two acts. This unusually matches this play to the exact plot structure of the original Carroll novels. The drawing room scene at the end of act 1 in the play, and the interval between act 1 and act 2, work as a narrative reset, to then present the entire second novel in act 2. Cast sizes in productions have ranged from 13 actors, to 20. Although originally written for the large scale RSC, Mitchell's play is also intended to be equally performed by smaller casts, using only limited props. The play is written with heavy cast doubling in mind.
Inception of Adrian Mitchell's play
Mitchell's stage adaptation originated as a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company. This followed a successful adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S Lewis in 1998 also for the same company. The play was made during a time of economic and internal stress for the RSC, which may or may not have affected the perception of the first production.
Mitchell's stage adaptation of the Alice novels by Lewis Carroll has somewhat limited stage directions in the text, aside from explaining scenery and transitions, allowing for it to be used in a manner of theatrical styles. Mitchell's published script also includes Charles Dodgson's own notes (originally published for Clarke's stage adaptation) on his characters, to help guide actors in performance. Mitchell also decided in adapting to keep the self parody characters that Charles Dodgson wrote into his novels: Lorina Liddell doubles as the Lory, Edith Liddell as the Eaglet, Robinson Duckworth as the Duck, and Charles Dodgson himself as both the Dodo and the White Knight.
Alice in the play can be split to 2 actors, so that Alice Liddell appears only in the Oxford 1862 prologue and epilogue, and the fictional 7 year old eccentric Alice is the protagonist for the entire act 1 and act 2. As Karoline Leach notes, "Dodgson never confused Alice {Liddell} with Alice the way we do. Even as he wrote the first draft of the Wonderland story, his "little heroine" was already carefully differentiated from the real child whose name she shared."
In his essay, "Millions of Alices", Mitchell revealed that he equally adapted Lewis Carroll's 2 Alice novels for his grandchildren: "Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll said he wrote Alice, to "please a child I loved (I don't remember any other motive)." That is the best reason in the world, and to please seven children I love is why I wrote this play." The RSC 2001 programme further gives details on Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll, Victorian era Oxford, and the play's characters, these notes all aimed at a young audience. Mitchell further elaborated on his play's vision: "There are a lot of bad tempered people. The Hatter is hectoring and the Caterpillar sneers. [Alice is] a child among adults. Alice is put-upon but she deals with it. She dances into each encounter, is friendly with the White Queen and with the White Knight, who is Carroll himself." Mitchell's play keeps the intellectual, whimsical, strange, fantastical and occasionally slightly dark tone of Carroll's original novels. As noted in reviews for Mitchell's C.S Lewis ...Wardrobe adaptation in 1998, his work aimed at young people refused to "talk down" to students, teenagers and child audiences, instead appealing to a broad audience of as many age brackets as possible. Accordingly, Mitchell's Alice play has since been produced by both professional companies with adult actors as well as student and youth theatre companies. All productions are aimed at an all ages audience.
Inception of Carroll's original novels In his adaptation of the books, Mitchell opens and closes his play with a somewhat fictionalized version of the biographically famous "Golden Afternoon" on the 4th of July 1862. This was the first day when Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) told the stories that would become the Alice novels to his friend Canon Robinson Duckworth and the Liddell children, Alice, Lorina, and Edith. This storytelling took place on a boating trip to Godstow from Oxford. The three sisters wished to hear nonsense stories as entertainment. Edward Wakeling notes that going boating was a typical Victorian activity:
In the Victorian age, life and attitudes were very different. If a man took a group of young children, all unrelated to him, on a boat-trip that lasted all afternoon, no-one would mind in the slightest. If a man took an unaccompanied young lady aged 17 to 25 on a similar boat-trip, he would cause untold damage to that lady's reputation and marriage prospects. Today, the reverse is true.
In Mitchell's play, the prologue and epilogue is framed with Dodgson telling the boat trip party both the Alice books in one day. In reality, Alice's adventures in Wonderland was told across a few boating trips in summer 1862:
"Occasionally [Dodgson] would take [the Liddells] out on boat trips, either with his brother, with a friend, or with visiting sisters. On these sociable river trips, the grown ups would allow the children to row, and they would all sing songs, or ask riddles."
Karoline Leach notes that occasionally Dodgson got bored with having to tell this story over the summer:
"Indications are the girls loved the tale and were always begging for new instalments, but that Dodgson was less enthusiastic (on one occasion he calls it the ‘interminable’ Alice's Adventures, and is peeved because he wants to sing them a new song he just made up instead)" Leach notes that Alice Liddell had to "pester" Dodgson on multiple occasions to make sure the story got written down.
On 6 August 1862, Dodgson finished the Wonderland story with a trial as a joke reference. This was inspired by the Liddell sisters' earlier attempts that day to play a popular logic game called "Ural Mountains", where two team captains had to argue an absurd crime. Dodgson wrote the stories he told down, starting on the 13th of November 1862. In February 1863, Dodgson gave an early version of the manuscript to friend and children's author George Macdonald, who read it to his family. Mrs Macdonald told Dodgson he could publish it as a novel. In November 1863, Dodgson met with publisher Alexander Macmillan. Much later, after the illustrations were complete, Dodgson finally presented the manuscript of Alice's adventures Underground (later called Alice's adventures in Wonderland) to Alice Liddell, in November 1864. The sequel novel to Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1871, was made from later stories, that Charles Dodgson told the Liddells when the sisters were learning how to play chess. The Looking-Glass stories were written down at a time of anguish for Charles Dodgson, after his father had died.
Play synopsis
Prologue: Oxford, 1862 In Oxford, on the 4th of July 1862, Alice Liddell (aged 10) her sisters Lorina (aged 13) and Edith (aged 6) and Canon Robinson Duckworth, drift down the river Thames. ("Golden Afternoon") The boating crew sit for a river picnic, to listen to the stories told by their friend, writer Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) until the evening. The sisters specifically request that Dodgson tells them stories with lots of nonsense in them. Alice Liddell in particular listens closely. She imagines the fictional "Alice" and all her adventures and dreams as Dodgson tells them to the party.
Act 1: Alice in Wonderland