ALiCE - Jasmine Vardimon Company at Sadlers Wells Review
Written by Jasmine for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
It should be no surprise to anyone familiar with Jasmin Vardimon’s work that ALiCE at Sadlers Wells is a brilliant, inventive, and genre-pushing dance performance.
By using the Alice in Wonderland story, Jasmin Vardimon opens a portal into a world of shifting identity, where we learn who we are through what the world throws at us. Vardimon combines different dance styles and cultural references to turn Wonderland into a place somewhat more familiar, and draws parallels with the world we live in.
Some of the most effective sequences, particularly the end, sees time disintegrate as Alice moves through a revolving set whose walls invoke the pages of a book, or when the nature of a couple’s relationship is continually changing as they move through the door between a grey world and a soft amber-lit one. Guy Bar-Amotz and Jasmin Vardimon’s set plays such a huge role in bringing this surreal world to life, and it does a wonderful job of doing so with the simplest of references - it is visually stunning whilst never using more than in needs to use to give you a sense of the world at that moment. The set is also beautifully tied into the actor’s performances, with characters such as the Cheshire Cat seeming to come right out of it.
The costume, by Elisabeth Sur and Dorota Wieckowska also makes those ties between the world of Wonderland in our world - characters will have surreal details or costume elements mixed up with modern day clothing - a bucket hat or the Queen in her high heels, for example. It does an amazing job of making it feel like we are watching a dream unfold, these elements of our world thrown together in unexpected ways, and gives us reference points to understand how these kinds of characters look in or might fit into our world.
In this piece, Wonderland is a place where we must not only relearn our identity but where we experience displacement. The Red Queen oversees all this, deciding from her position of unchecked power who does and does not belong (it is no coincidence, I’m sure, that as we slip back towards the real world that a Boris Johnson look-alike appears onstage). Whilst it is a place full of wonder, it feels clear that we are never far from the darker underbelly of Wonderland experienced by those it excludes.
It is impossible not to be blown away by the performers who incorporate so many different dance forms into their work, from hip hop and break dance to more theatrical movement sequences, which create gorgeous visuals. The sound design complements these shifting tones perfectly - the result of a collaboration between Jasmin Vardimon and Joel Cahen.
The entire company are always slick, always top energy, and absolutely amazing, and the music supports them every step of the way. It could all be very overwhelming, but following Alice gives us someone to root for and a journey to sympathise with through out the show, and what is so beautiful about their performance and that of the entire company is how they manage to unite naturalistic acting/emotional moments with the less naturalistic/more stylistic world.
You can also still feel this production’s origins in VR in the way we see Alice come off the page, beginning as a moving drawing and then gradually becoming more real. It sets us up for the slightly unreal space we’ll be inhabiting, where real problems seem to still rise up.
This show will leave you with so many of its images living on in your memory, and give you a lot to think about as you, like Alice, see the problems that face Wonderland in our world today - and you will, almost certainly, not want to be on the side that handles them like the Red Queen.
ALiCE plays at Sadlers Wells until 24 May
★★★★
