Review: ALiCE, Jasmin Vardimon Company - Sadler’s Wells
Dance theatre in service to imagery and illusion. Jasmin Vardimon’s ALiCE offers a visually striking, conceptually ambitious reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but for all its sensory spectacle, it struggles to sustain the emotional depth it gestures towards.
It is no small thing to introduce young audiences to inventive theatrical experiences, and Vardimon’s company should be commended for creating a show that is accessible to children while still aiming to resonate with adults. The production embraces the surreal logic of Wonderland, presenting a fragmented, chaptered narrative that explores themes of identity, belonging, and transformation.
The production design features a revolving set, part storybook, part dreamscape, that propels Alice’s journey through a kaleidoscope of environments. Projections, costumes, and choreography are tightly interwoven, though not always cohesively. The performance unfolds in chapters, each referencing iconic moments from the original tale, and rest assured, the favourites all make an appearance. In one chapter titled ‘Identity’, for instance, multiple dancers embody different versions of Alice, culminating in a pop-fuelled sequence set to “Who the F**k is Alice?” It’s a choice that feels both pointed and oddly jarring: a literal take on the question of identity, but one that risks being more bemusing than revealing.
Vardimon’s hallmark is theatrical layering, and here it includes hip hop, line dancing, contemporary movement, and digital scenography. But while the visual vocabulary is rich, the movement itself lacks nuance. The choreography skims the surface, and though moments of poignancy emerge, particularly in scenes evoking otherness and displacement, they are fleeting. There is beauty, but not enough weight in the body or clarity of intention to make the characters truly live through the dance.
The set design, while inventive, sometimes feels overloaded. The integration of animation and movement, once a cutting-edge tool, has now become a familiar device, and here it doesn’t always offer fresh insight. In trying to balance so many elements metaphors, storytelling, and technical interplay, the production occasionally collapses under its own ambition. At times, quite literally, with technical malfunctions interrupting the flow.
Still, there are flashes of magic: a smoking caterpillar, a chaotic tea party, and a battalion of soldiers, for example. These images echo Wonderland’s weird and wonderful spirit. But they remain just that, images. There is little sense of Alice’s internal arc beyond metaphor. Where the show gestures toward political resonance, such as themes of immigration, they feel underdeveloped, leaving the audience reaching for coherence.
ALiCE is bold in concept, vibrant in design, and full of energy, but it never quite finds the emotional or narrative throughline to ground its visual imagination. A Wonderland full of promise, but ultimately, one in which we remain visitors rather than participants.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton