SCENE IT: CTCB’s ballet-lite staging of ALICE IN WONDERLAND an absurdist pantomime take on Carroll’s classic

Barbara Loots

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Gerard Charle’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND, currently onstage at the Artscape Theatre, feels a bit like a fever dream. This Cape Town City Ballet (CTCB) production draws on many an artistic form, one of which is ballet, to take the audience on a whirlwind tour through Lewis Carroll’s tale of a young girl who falls down a rabbit hole and into a fantasy world filled with curious creatures and a rather blood-lusty queen.

Photo by Oscar O’Ryan.

This production has a preset that sees Alice (Isabella Blair) lounging around reading a book, while the Butler (Gregan Aherin) sets up a dinner table scene. Ballet audiences are not often exposed to pre-sets (and I will withhold from going off on my own standard dislike for pre-sets rant), but them not knowing that a pre-set does not form part of the production proper resulted in rather angry ladies shushing patrons who were still walking in and having a leisurely conversation seeing that house lights were still on. Please, may 2026 be the year where the pre-set gets relegated to the darkest corners of the theatrical archives. Okay, so a bit of a rant… but the confusion of is-it-the-start/isn’t-it-the-show-yet for an audience gathering in the theatre started things off on a rather uneasy note with patrons not finding each other in the anticipation of the dimming of the house lights.

The show starts off in a rather darkly, absurdist manner, which grabbed my attention immediately. The use of light and shadows to ‘grow’ and ‘shrink’ both Alice and the White Rabbit added to the appeal, as did a scene where Alice chases the White Rabbit through a myriad of doors in a rather delightful manner. The AV (presumably AI generated) Cheshire Cat was rather disappointing, given that we had just seen some rather clever shadow puppetry. A bit of out of the box thinking should have made it possible to maintain a clear aesthetic throughout the show without relegating the famous cat to the depths of generic AI despair.

Photo by Brenda Veldtman.

From there though, Alice finds herself in a Wonderland that shifts from absurdist vision to ballet pantomime with voice overs and the absence of any clarity of vision. The ballet component of the show itself is also progressively overshadowed by the narrative elements, depriving one of those gasping solo moments in a ballet production where the dancing does the ‘talking’ to such a degree that an audience can’t but bellow bravo mid show. The pantomime effect then morphs even further into what feels like a children’s ballet recital –the little ballerinas are admittedly rather cute at first, but at some point they started swaying out of sync at the side of the stage in a manner that detracts from the ballet performance proper when Alice crosses a field of dancing flowers. The manner in which the ballet dancers of the future are incorporated into the show needs to be revisited, or more time needs to be spent with them in rehearsal with the full company to properly make them part of the production.

The production swings back to some of its initial absurdist ways when Alice encounters the Caterpillar, showcasing the eclectic use of yoga balls with modern movements reinforcing the idea that there could have been ways of incorporating the Cheshire Cat using puppetry.

Photo by Oscar O’Ryan.

But wait, things get weirder: We started absurdly, morphed into pantomime, took a turn at recital, hinted back to absurdist, and then the music drops out and the audience ‘meets’ the Jabberwocky through a spoken word, interpretative dance moment. It’s all quite a lot to wrap your head around.

What was rather interesting throughout was to see Alice running into different versions of herself as the story unfolds.

Photo by Brenda Veldtman.

Although ballet-lite as a show, ALICE IN WONDERLAND does offer moments where technique peeks through the ridiculousness of it all, especially the scenes when the White Queen (Hannah Ward) takes to the stage. The White Rabbit along with the main Alice also has some shining moments where ballet proper peaks through the looking glass. Alice’s meeting with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum showed great promise of being the standout ballet moment, being both fun and technique forward, but the lack of synchronicity eventually led to the cards tumbling down on that promise.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND surprises and confuses in equal parts. It’s lovely seeing Cape Town City Ballet play in the realm of non-classical ballet offerings, opening the art form up to a whole new and younger generation of ballet lovers. From that perspective, it’s good to see the company push its performative boundaries in such an experimental fashion.

Photo by Oscar O’ Ryan.

Although not successful as a cohesive offering as yet, this production definitely has interesting elements to offer and has the potential to be a fun family outing as the kids will likely love all the weird characters Alice interacts with. As a theatrical offering though, it does not feel fully conceptualised and parts of it felt under rehearsed the further Alice wandered into Wonderland.

The CTCB presented ALICE IN WONDERLAND runs at the Artscape Theatre until 28 December 2025. With the entire season heavily booked in advance, CTCB has added a matinee performance on the last day of the season, 28 December 2025 at 16h30. Please note no children under the age of 5 are allowed at evening performances.