“Alice in Wonderland” premiered on Friday evening in a studio production at the Chemnitz Theater – no need to worry…
Yes, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll are masterpieces. They are among the most cited, most cited and best known books in the English language. They have been staged countless times, filmed several times and have had a lasting impact on children’s literature. And yet there are contemporaries who don’t like the Alice construct, or at least find it “weird”, i.e. unpleasantly strange.
As a reminder, Alice falls down a rabbit hole and ends up in a strange “wonderland” where she encounters strange beings who behave strangely towards her, which inevitably leads to misunderstandings. While the Grimm fairy tales are usually characterized by beautiful clarity, the shenanigans that Carroll is up to with his Alice can sometimes cause a feeling of anxiety in sensitive-empathic people. Does this emotion also arise when the fairy tale is staged by the Chemnitz Theater?
Directed by Alexander Flache, he used the version by Jan Bodinus, which is very popular in Germany. However, the directors interpret them very freely – from the funny children’s play to the grotesque for an adult audience. In Chemnitz, the piece starts in the foyer of the east wing. Alice (Eva Kristina Stempel) has just come to the end of a concert with her band and sings “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane at the end. She is accompanied by the musicians Charles (Karl Seibt) and Lewis (Valentino Fortuzzi) and when Alice’s mirror image Ecila (Louise Debatin) appears, Karl Seibt has already become a bustling white rabbit, who from now on Alice and the audience in the next few 90 minutes – but then on the chairs of the east wing stage – will accompany.
Seibt, Debatin and Fortuzzi – together with Stempel all acting students from Berlin and Zurich – have a lot to do that evening. They slip into the familiar Wonderland characters. And they do that with a lot of joy in the game in a funny and wonderful visualization with very loving costumes and an imaginative stage design, for which the students of the Master’s course in stage design and scenic space at the TU Berlin, Nuphar Barkol and Arite Lochen, were responsible. Shadow play, video projections, large cups, cooking pots, cupboards, pieces of cake – interestingly enough, the students largely do without bright colors in the circus arena wonderland. The blue foam balls that Alice is crying come into their own all the more. And she cries often and a lot. Even in Flache’s production she is not necessarily welcomed in a friendly manner in Wonderland. As a spectator, however, one has a lot of fun with Eva Stempel’s play, who gives her Alice, gigantic or shrunken, enchantingly alternately naive, confused and overwhelmed in search of herself. One is delighted by Louise Debatin’s Cheshire Cat and feels for Karl Seibt’s hyperactive rabbit, who panics about the Queen of Hearts, who is said to be chopping off her head, but in a quiet moment sings about her love for Alice. Valentino Fortuzzi is also wonderful as the arrogant, speaking and finally even singing door.
After Amphitryon, the guys from Chemnitz once again prove they have a good knack for nonsense in a class of its own. The sensitive-empathic ones are reassured: There is absolutely nothing oppressive about the Chemnitz Alice. The piece is a welcome escape from everyday life that still works surprisingly well after almost 160 years.
Lewis Carroll, whose real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is said to have been a rather reclusive and reclusive scientist. It is said that only among children did the eccentric become a sparkling storyteller full of imagination and imagination who spread happiness.
Alice finally wakes up from her dream in the east wing of Chemnitz, and the ensemble has accomplished its work as an appeal to the imagination: “And we happily steer home into the splendor of the evening sun”. After much applause, the audience complied with this request.
For the piece Alice in Wonderland in the east wing of the Spinnbau Chemnitz there are only tickets left on November 3rd and 26th, 2022.