Monday, March 21, 2011
Take Me Back to Mad Hatter: Wonderland, With Janet Dacal as Alice, Begins on Broadway
Playbill.com: "Wonderland, the new musical that reinvents 'Alice in Wonderland' for the 21st century, begins Broadway previews March 21 at the Marquis Theatre. Janet Dacal, of In the Heights, plays a modern-day Manhattan mom named Alice who sings a score by Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I love it when old classics get a new twist to them just like Wonderland. It will be interesting to see what it turns out be like especially since we at Carnegie Mellon are taking our own twist on Alice in Wonderland.
I have to say I've been excited about this musical for a while. I first heard about it at Broadway Theater Project in Tampa florida two summers ago. Frank Wildhorn came to talk to us about his musical in development Wonderland. After all the hype and rumors I've heard about the show I can't wait to finally get to see it! I really hope it turns out as good as it sounds!
Yesterday at Conservatory Hour when the creative team for The Alice Project was talking about all their media endeavors, I saw many similarities between what CMU is trying to do and the direction Wonderland is going. I spent spring break observing a week of tech on Wonderland and they are incorporating a lot of media also. They, like CMU, are taking the original illustrations and animating them to bring them alive. This is their preshow projection onto the grand. They also used the actual text and animated it, like CMU showed us they were doing. The difference is that CMU is using the media as their concept and direction, whereas Wonderland is using it just to stay modern and capture the magical, fantastic world of Wonderland. I was surprised though to see such similar results when both tried to incorporate media.
I understand that Alice in Wonderland is a very important and influential piece of literature so I understand why theatres, movies, and even orchestras are taking on adapting Alice into something new. Alice will always have something to say about the current state of the world, and theatres will continue to adapt.
With that being said I don't understand the purpose of this Alice. From the description "of an ordinary house wife going under the streets of New York City" to find Wonderland. This just sounds like another show that can be adapted for New York City audiences.
Here is the website if you want to listen to some of the songs. http://www.wonderlandonbroadway.com/index.html?gclid=CMu2-cTc4qcCFcW5KgodFy6q-g#refgoog
I don't know what I think of this. I'm all for re-vamping classics, and this could be interesting. I'll put off real judgement until I see it (which, at $32, I probably will). I really like the other scores the composer has written, and I'm interesteed certainly in hearing this one.
I feel like Carroll's stuff has been popular recently, and that's kind of worrying to me. The new Alice movie, this, the Alice project. At my high school, someone wrote a new play based around Alice.... I feel like it's become a hype instead of an hommage to Carroll. So we'll see what the show is like. This article didn't say too much, for obvious reasons, and I still don't know how I feel about it.
While I agree that putting a new twist on an old story can bring a lot of exciting ideas to the table and create some truly interesting stage experiences, I feel that it needs to be done with caution. Much like with Shakespeare plays taken so far from their original intent with pop culture references and lightsaber battles, Wonderland could easily take the original story too far from its roots and end up a disappointment.
Post a Comment