Alice by The Washington Ballet at Capital One Hall by Luella Christopher

ALICE – The Washington Ballet

Capital One Hall

Tysons, Virginia

April 26, 2025

By Luella Christopher, Ph.D

Banner photo: TWSB Students and Andile Ndlovu by Sonia Bartolomeo for TWB

*Note, performers in photos used may not all correspond to the cast of the show reviewed.

An audio version of this review can be heard below.

Capital One Hall bustled with excitement as theatergoers entered in fancy clothes, crowns, and a few rabbit ears for the Saturday noon matinee of ALICE, the creation of Washington Ballet director and choreographer Edwaard Liang. An ambitious visual and dramatic spectacle pummeled the audience, despite characters and a plot line not always easy to follow for devotees of the original story by Lewis Carroll or the beloved 1951 Disney film version. To wit, wasn’t that Alice herself sitting under a tree reading a book in the opening scene of the book and movie? With the long skirt and rocking chair, we figure on an adult –  likely the mother. In truth, it’s The Sister (Noura Sander)! Alice sits nearby, attired in her signature blue dress with white pinafore (short, which will reveal her ballet technique to maximum effect).

Alice – played by Ashley Murphy-Wilson – captivates and vexes with her innocence,  interminable curiosity, and resilience throughout the ballet.  She meets the White Rabbit (Gilles Delellio) who executes an impressive series of frisky pas de chats and entices her to chase after him down a hole. Spiraling into Wonderland, Alice encounters floating bookcases that are depicted in Liang’s work by stunning floor-to-ceiling projections upstage. They morph into rows of doors, enhanced still further by ensembles of “Dancing Doors” drawn from TWB company ranks. Ensconced first in white, then in varied colors, the ensembles are notable due to Liang’s frequent resort to symmetry in their technical steps and levels – making the staging of the ballet more compelling than dissecting the movements themselves.     

Trying in vain to navigate the doors, Alice succumbs to invitations in rapid succession to “Drink Me” and “Eat Me”, carried across the stage in raised banners. All this provokes the studied amusement and approval of Flamingos, Piglets, and Hedgehogs adoringly played by children from The Washington School of Ballet. They are soon directed by the White Rabbit, who solos briefly in a commanding series of barrel turns and cabrioles on alternating legs and feet. A large contingent of female company dancers in pink with tails representing Flamingos brings us back to Liang’s reliance on synchronous movement, complete with impeccably executed échappés. The Lead Flamingo (Nicole Graniero) in dark pink top and green tights features prominently in this sequence.  

Next Alice meets the Caterpillar (Nardia Boodoo) and watches him turn into a butterfly. She sees Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (played by Javier Morera and Vladimir Tapkharov) – unmistakable in their flaming red wigs and striped pants – and tries to stop their incessant arguing, to no avail. Next Alice meets the Cheshire Cat (Lope Lim) who warns her about the dangers of the forest. Wandering about the giant mushrooms where the Jabberwocky is lurking, she is whisked away by the White Rabbit to a madcap tea party presided over by the Mad Hatter (Stephen Nakagawa) and attended by such important personages as the March Hare (Jackson Rankin). The Jabberwocky (luckily just a giant puppet) stalks the party guests, parading around the stage in all its fierceness. In a moment of utter silliness, this prompts the White Knight (Nicholas Cowden) and Red Knight (Oscar Sanchez) to fight over who will slay the Jabberwocky. Unsurprisingly, Alice rises to the occasion and overcomes a dragon whose corpus nearly fills the stage.                                                                                                                            

[Some interactions between characters in ALICE are presented with insufficient clarity unless one is well read on its source material, and perhaps cannot be without universal access to program notes in hard copy. Unfortunately, such notes have lost their place in the constructively recessive American economy. How many patrons take the time or possess the devices to access a screen, much less read these notes on their way into the theater? So, this writer initially confused the Caterpillar with the Cheshire Cat and did not identify the March Hare as a key male character until receipt of the cast list.]

With eventual access to the program notes, this writer unearths that the knights decide to reward Alice for her bravery by taking her to meet the Queen of Hearts. On their way to the castle, Alice meets the Roses (Samara Rittinger, Andrea Almon, Kateryna Derechyna) in the Queen’s royal garden. They become Alice’s fast friends in one of the lovelier sequences of choreography for our ingénue and female ensemble in green unitards and petal headdresses. In the Disney version of the story, highly contentious moments unfolded in which the Queen accused her lackeys of “painting the Roses red while she likes white instead”. In Liang’s retelling of this series of nonsensical events, Alice simply discovers that the castle is made of cards – beautifully depicted by a full wall upstage of heart card projections. There is even a “real live” Joker (Francesco Messina). 

A battle royale ensues. With homage to the iconic Helena Bonham-Carter in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, TWB’s villainess (Eun Won Lee) virtually dominates the intricate choreography and the drama in this ballet with her bravura jetés and eccentric behavior – from her scolding of the bumbling King of Hearts (Akira Lida) to her challenging of Alice’s victory in a game of croquet and ultimate hauling of her into court where a judge finds the Queen’s visitor guilty of cheating. Alice protests this unfairness, but the Queen’s lackeys torment and tumble over our heroine like a TRUE PACK OF CARDS. 

End of a little-too-much of a reality show or fanciful dream? Alice finds herself back on the riverbank with The Sister – who retrieves her book and watches the White Rabbit disappear down the hole again. Should she follow him? Only the audience will decide. 

This review would be remiss without kudos to the talented technical teams: costume design by Liz Vandal, scene design by James Kronzer, lighting design by Jack Mehler, and puppet design by Eric J. Van Wyk. Finally, the musical arrangement by Oliver Peter Graber was drawn from contemporary classical composers,  notably Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” (Jupiter and Mars) as well as his Military Suites for Band, the latter of which this writer played on French horn at Interlochen and thus recalls fondly. While use of the Mars component from “The Planets” seemed a tad too obvious for some scenes like the jousting, the lilting Military Suites fit Liang’s dancing flowers to a “t”.  All things considered, Liang’s ALICE is a monumental, magical production to savor and “catch” again at every opportunity. 

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Ⓒ  2025 by Luella Christopher