High Concept Alice in Wonderland ideas will never work for broadway

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 2:43pm

Wonderland and now Alice by Heart.

Splat.

Do we agree?

[DoTheDood]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 2:51pm

There was also "Wonder.land" (Even tho it never transferred, but still), so yeah this idea just doesn't seem to work

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 2:51pm

Well, Alice by Heart didn't get to Broadway.

 

COULD it happen?  Sure, I don't see why not - the problem is, the story isn't very simple and already borders on abstract - so it just adds, unnecessarily so some may think, confusion not clarity.  (to have a high concept).

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 3:42pm

People need to stop using Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz. Come up with something original, enough already!

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 4:14pm

Completely agree about Wonderland, Alice By Heart, and Wonder.Land. In particular, Wonder.Land was among the worst pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.

However, I counter your Wonderland, Alice By Heart and Wonder.Land with Then She Fell, which I think is absolutely brilliant.

[LuPita2]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 5:19pm

I completely agree, I don't have any idea how either one did financially, but it seems like no one can figure out how to bring these ideas to large audiences and be sustainable and/or great.

Updated On: 5/9/19 at 05:19 PM

[jimmycurry01]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 6:16pm

TotallyEffed said: "People need to stop using Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz. Come up with something original, enough already!"

I would still love to see a faithful big budget film version of The Wizard of Oz, though - nothing high-concept, not a prequel, or sequel; I just wat the full story of the first novel on screen.

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 5/9/19 at 6:48pm

I feel like you either have to do Alice like the book just straightforwardly like the Eva Gaillene play and recognize that there’s zero narrative push and it’s just little literary vignettes, or leave it alone.

Alice is already conceptual and rooted in political satire of Victorian society. When you add your own concept on top of it it just gets muddy.

[missthemountains]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 2:55pm

I think the problem with ALICE IN WONDERLAND is that it's really a story that tends to be ill-adapted by authors who genuinely don't understand the original, or worse, are trying to add something that's not there. It's really a commentary on a certain society in a particular turn of the century that in many ways has relevance, but is also fairly specific. Lewis Carroll really felt there were too many books with "morals" in it for children (after all this is the era that horrifying stories like STRUWWELPETER were coming out, that basically painted very grim pictures for children who didn't behave) and the book is very intentionally written as a plotless series of events because that just really wasn't being done then in literature. It is intentionally a very vague narrative delving into the absurd. It is a piece that certainly has themes of children being seen and not heard, the disorienting feelings of growing up (with the shriking and growing), how the people in the upper class society tend to be the most clueless, the ridiculousness of rules authorities set out -- but I see a lot of these adaptations go wrong in taking it outside of England in the 1800s. The story just doesn't play well in say, modern NYC or a psych ward, or the multiple adaptations trying to force love stories between Alice and the Mad Hatter..it just always comes off as incredibly contrived and shoehorned in. One of my goals is to stage an adaptation I've written that follows the book exactly. There's really never been an adaptation that hasn't in some way combined the source material with LOOKING GLASS or even captured every single chapter. I would argue the only version of ALICE we haven't seen yet is one that actually follows the book to a tea. The 1985 musical version comes close, as does the 1999 Halmark version. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I do love the 1982 CTC Company production which you can watch here

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 3:00pm

Not broadway, but Lookingglass Alice was quite successful with its adaptation.

[Music_Maker42]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 3:01pm

I really wish someone could get the licensing of that 1985 version. It’s really a fabulous version. Has it ever been staged? I loved the film version.

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 4:03pm

Music_Maker42 said: "I really wish someone could get the licensing of that 1985 version. It’s really a fabulous version. Has it ever been staged? I loved the film version."

I’ve seen that....it’s kinda campy and bad honestly hahah but I know people have nostalgia for it. Also if I recall it’s another one of those “force a moral on Alice” adaptations

 

[Fan123]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 6:00pm

missthemountains, FWIW if you're not aware, Christopher Wheeldon and Joby Talbot's popular ballet version focuses only on the first book, or at least that's what the creators claim. (In some cases I can't remember which episode comes from which!) Although, obviously, it's not a Broadway play or musical. There is a thin throughline added about Alice wanting to find and help her friend, the Knave of Hearts, but that doesn't 'take over'. There's a DVD around for those interested.

[darquegk]

Posted: 5/10/19 at 11:56pm

I've written a stage adaptation of the original novel as well that is pretty directly "by the book," embracing the Pythonesque quality of Carroll's material. The funny thing is how modern the surrealist sketch-comedy aspects of the novel feel today: what must have been a thumbing of the nose at conventional children's literature then feels frankly very of the time now.

I've also tinkered with writing a score for it, since the book is full of songs and poems. I haven't devoted my full attention to the music, but when I do have time between projects I put some work into a song or two. Embracing the randomness of everything else, the score veers deliberately between genres for every single song: there's a Broadway boom-chick polka in the classic style, a Northern/Irish ballad of the Lucy Simon sort, and a few more specific and esoteric choices, like a pastiche of dark cabaret band Circus Contraption or one of Elton John's "11/17/70" era.