What with Calvin Klein forced to remove their nubile waifs and wafers from the sides of buses because of their “troubling” sexuality, this may be just the time to consider Charles Dodgson and his photographic obsession with a girl named Alice. Of course, Dodgson kept it in his pants—and on the page, his letters to Alice burned by her mother. But the book he wrote as one “Lewis Carroll” has inspired more adaptations than perhaps any other work of fanciful fiction. "Alice in Wonderland," like all picaresque adventures, has its pluses and minuses as a dramatic vehicle. Its wry and magical events give the piece an eternal sense of wonder. Also, like Peter Pan, it breathes the air of endless youth while questioning the absurdly “sensible” world of grown-ups. On the other hand, even the Disney film gets longwinded because it’s a random series of encounters befalling a heroine who’s a bit of a cipher. Since scenes work individually but don’t build to a greater whole, by the end we feel as push-pulled and worn out as poor Alice. Robert Wilson’s piece, Alice, gives the story more than usual coherence because it brackets the Wonderland journey with Charles Dodgson’s (Stefan Kurt) internal struggle. At the end we even get an Alice (Annette Paulmann), now aged, looking back on her life like a sad Dietrichian diva. For the most part, Wilson keeps the action light and amusing (a good thing, too, for when he turns philosophical for a long monologue in the middle of act one, Alice might as well have traded its shrinking potion for laudanum). In keeping with his work of the last decade, Tom Waits (in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Brennan), surround half a dozen terrific songs with passably Brechtian snippets. Most memorable are the haunting theme song and a number for an ever-inflating caterpillar (Jorg Holm). We also get the typical Wilson touches—such as square spaces carved out of black curtains and red light—and mercifully few bouts of Wilson-esque lethargy, the dim-witted opening dance sequence being an unfortunate exception. I heard folks who saw The Black Rider, Wilson and Waits’s previous collaboration, complain that Alice isn’t nearly as gripping, inventive, or tuneful. I can take their word for it without letting that spoil the better moments of this surprisingly diverting addition to the Wilson canon.
