The Musicalisation of Alice

A couple of weeks ago, I started listening to Alice by Heart, the most recent collaboration between Spring Awakening’s Duncan Sheik (music) and Steven Sater (lyrics). They were joined by Waitress’ book writer Jessie Nelson, who co-wrote the book with Sater, it plays with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Set during the Blitz, Alice Spencer recounts the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from memory to her friend Alfred. They are sheltered in a tube station, with Alfred being quarantined whilst suffering from tuberculosis. In telling the story, they come into contact with various characters from Lewis Carroll’s tale as the timelines become blurred, including the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts. The off-Broadway cast featured Molly Gordon as Alice, Colton Ryan as Alfred and Grace McClean as the Queen of Hearts.

The show feels very Spring Awakening in its themes and haunting score. We begin with ‘West of Words’, which immediately establishes the intangible world of Wonderland and the show itself. Mirroring Carroll’s Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Sater evokes the famously wild world of Wonderland as somewhere, ‘West of Words’. Seemingly a universe of unrest and restlessness, ‘The house is tumbling down’[1] for our protagonists. This sentiment is a clear reference to mental health, which is prominent throughout. Taking a text written for children, the team infuses the musical with references to grief, loss and puberty with titles like, ‘Chillin’ the Regrets’, ‘Your Shell of Grief’ and ‘Another Room in Your Head’. In the latter, Alfred faces his own mortality:

'What will you do when I'm not here with you / And you sit here and you’re not with me / How will you do, finding something to do / When there's so much you thought that we'd see'[2]

This sense of unspent life and the wise youth is also evident in Spring Awakening. Melchior is condemned by the adults for his knowledge about sex and puberty and Wendla pays with her life for being robbed of this knowledge by her mother. Sheik and Sater’s discussions of mental health in their musicals opened the genre up to younger audiences and in Alice by Heart, the resolution is tinged with the hope that those we lose never fully leave us. Echoing Ilse’s look to a new life in, ‘The Song of Purple Summer’, Alice sings, ‘Down the hole you go and there you are’[3], in the finale, ‘Winter Blooms’. She lets herself feel. In Alice by Heart, the story is adapted into a more young adult tone and conveys the importance of Carroll’s novel to the characters on stage. In an interview promoting the Broadway production, Sater stated that, ‘the show is all about the power of art, of literature, and then the imagination to get us through chaotic times’[4]. As such, nostalgia for Carroll’s tale is utilised for both Alice Spencer and audiences, allowing us to see how this story can keep being retold and used to tell new stories.

This is not the first musical to adapt Carroll's world. In 1886, a musical adaptation opened on the West End by Henry Savile Clarke (book and lyrics), Walter Slaughter (music) and Aubrey Hopwood (lyrics). According to the British Library’s archives, Clarke, ‘wrote to Lewis Carroll to ask for permission to adapt Alice in Wonderland into a musical stage show…A stickler for accuracy, Carroll was actively involved in the whole process, from the adaptation of the novel to the selection of actors.’[5] Subtitled, ‘A dream play for children in two acts’, the adaptation opens with a chorus of fairies, playing on the theatrical concept of the chorus. They sing, ‘Sleep, maiden, sleep…Sleep, Alice Sleep’[6], willing her to, ‘Wake, Alice, wake to the Wonderland dream.’[7] This is evidently a direct adaptation of the novel, setting up Wonderland as a dream in the first stanza and following Alice’s journey to meet each character. As a story so widely adapted, this seems to be the most straight forward musical version of the story.

Frank Wildhorn of Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical and Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical fame composed Wonderland: A New Alice. He worked with Jack Murphy (book and lyrics) and Gregory Boyd (lyrics). It was produced on Broadway in 2011 with various productions being staged prior. This contemporary adaptation featured protagonist Alice Cornwinkle and daughter Chloe, Alice’s ex-husband Jack and various characters from Carroll’s novel including the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar and the Queen of Hearts. In classic Wildhorn fashion, the music has a pop style. According to the New York Times, ‘“Wonderland” transforms Alice’s surreal wanderings into a contemporary parable about reconnecting with your inner child’[8]. The show resolves with the finale, ‘Finding Wonderland’, where Alice reflects that, ‘We seldom see all the miracles in front of us’[9], commenting on finding the magic of Wonderland in everyday life. The company repeats this sentiment in the final lines: ‘finding Wonderland is finding who you are…So when I close my eyes…I keep on finding Wonderland’[10]. In this interpretation, the nostalgia of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is seemingly utilised to apply this fantastical world to adulthood.

Damon Albarn (music) and Moira Buffini’s (book and lyrics) wonder.land premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2015 and transferred to the National Theatre the following year. Another contemporary adaptation, the show adapts Wonderland into a virtual environment. As discussed by 59 Productions, the company behind the projections for both productions so far, protagonist Aly is, ‘Bullied at school and unhappy at home, wonder.land lets her escape from her parents, from teachers, from herself.’[11] In the song, ‘Wonder.land’, as recorded in the album Songs from Wonder.land, Aly sings, ‘As far as I can go from the Alice that I know / Erase me’[12]. Updating the story to reflect the age of social media, this adaptation conveyed a darker struggle concerning toxic authority figures. Aly wants to disappear into Alice’s world, much like Alice falls down the hole following the White Rabbit.

With such a range of adaptations, it is clear that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has provided inspiration for many creatives. From the larger than life characters to the timeless feel of the tale, it is innately theatrical. As the straight woman to Wonderland's colourful characters, we enter the world through Alice in Carroll’s novels. In these musicals, we see a development in how the story and particularly the figure of Alice herself has been utilised. From a classic, direct transfer to the stage, to an adult incarnation from New York, to an online avatar, to a 15 year old whose childhood has been touched by Carroll’s story. Indeed, the themes of growing up and growing into your own have seemingly kept the tale prevalent. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most popular children’s stories of all time and clearly resonates with adults and children alike. We keep these characters, and the world of Wonderland, with us into our adulthoods and adaptations like these allow the tale’s significance to keep evolving.

Sources [1] ‘West of Words’, Genius (2019) <https://genius.com/Original-cast-of-alice-by-heart-west-of-words-lyrics> [2] Ibid. [3] ‘Winter Blooms’, Genius (2019) <https://genius.com/Original-cast-of-alice-by-heart-winter-blooms-lyrics> [4] Broadwaycom, Molly Gordon and the Cast of ALICE BY HEART on Bringing the Duncan Sheik Musical Off-Broadway, online video recording, YouTube, 18 December 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDfo6qVaSDs> [5] ‘Play adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, in British Library <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/play-adaptation-of-alice-in-wonderland> [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] Charles Isherwood, ‘There’s No Place Like Queens’, The New York Times (2011) <https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/theater/reviews/wonderland-gregory-boyd-frank-wildhorn-review.html> [9] ‘Finding Wonderland’, Genius (2011) <https://genius.com/Frank-wildhorn-finding-wonderland-lyrics> [10] Ibid. [11] ‘Wonder.land’, 59 Productions (2021) <https://59productions.co.uk/project/wonder-land/> [12] ‘Wonder.land’, Genius (2021) <https://genius.com/Damon-albarn-wonderland-lyrics#song-info>