Reviews

It’s more than a decade since Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, gave a speech that made global headlines. She took the podium during Question Time to respond to a motion proposed by the then leader of the opposition, Tony Abbot, which accused her of sexism and being unfit to lead. Her words that followed – her ‘misogyny’ speech – became instantly famous and globally viral.

As the name indeed suggests, this is a re-working of Lewis Carroll’s much-loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Created almost 160 years ago, Carroll was even then accused of indulging in too many magic mushrooms to create the outlandish series of stories. It is no wonder as it peopled with exaggerated characters in increasingly weird and outrageous situations conversing in language peppered with silly puns, word-play and made-up words, and it might even be said that this version takes this hallucinogenic notion a few steps further.

Shakespeare’s epic tragedy is reset to a post-apocalyptic world that has reverted to medieval power through monarchies, but this production from the University of Adelaide’s Theatre Guild retains the power, language and universal themes of its origins.

As we wait for Glenn Shea to come on stage, we range over Meg White’s resonant, evocative design.  There is a bare, dead tree, stark against what would be the sky.  There are outcrops of rock, some spread with skins – possum or kangaroo.  One outcrop holds a small pool of water – a sink for travellers.  Another a circular dish of whitefellas’ flour.  Upstage, a sort of battered, derelict structure of aluminium frame, cyclone wire mesh and missing panels.