Alice160... happened

(Charlotte Bradley as Alice and Daniel Page as the Queen of Hearts in Penny Farrow's Alice in Wonderland, London UK cast. Image by Steve Gregson)

As we're coming towards the end of Alice160, the 160th anniversary of the publication of the first Alice book, Alice's adventures in Wonderland, its worth reflecting on what this anniversary has meant and what events took place. I really do wonder what cultural studies scholars (such as Will Brooker) will make of this anniversary. Unlike 1932 or 1997, it is not a birth-year centenary for Dodgson. Like 2015, it is an anniversary of the first Alice novel's publication, except this year lacked major projects for the most part. Its worth thinking, first and foremost, on what an anniversary's purpose is. We might say to re-engage the general public on why a work of art exists and why it matters. With long dead artists like Dodgson, anniversaries help to keep the work relevant. In that regard, I think we can say that Alice160 has mostly worked, even if there are big gaps with mainstream projects this year just not really popping up. 

I'm going to focus on the UK the most here, since I know this place the best. If you as an international reader had a different or better Alice160 experience, I do hope you enjoyed it!

In the UK, the year has been dominated by smaller celebrations, often with a community focus. You can see this with the wool based character installations in Rugby, and a wealth of community theatre productions, normally of Duffield's adaptation, Wade's modern adaptation, or La Gaillenne's adaptation of almost everything.

(Aside: Adrian Mitchell's 2 part version (also known as the RSC/Royal Shakespeare Company Alice) is still criminally underseen in theatres, despite being the best script on the market. I maintain it does both books better than La Gaillenne's does. I strongly recommend theatres go for Mitchell when considering a version of Alice to produce.)  

The big theatre project this year was Penny Farrow's sell out musical Alice coming to London with a new UK cast (it had premiered in Sydney a few years ago). I didn't get to see this, and unfortunately I don't think it has a published script so I can't review it. However it got rave reviews in the press, with many saying that it had same whimsy and spirit as the novels. There was no brand new big theatre creation like for 150, where we had Wonder.land from National Theatre. Several new works have popped up for the festive season, although at the moment no one knows if Geoff Aymer's modern Peckham set adaptation or Chinonyerem Odimba's play will go the distance, or even if those two will be published or get good reviews. We'll see!

The biggest new bit of information academically we had this year was the collection donated to Oxford University, something I hope will get a catalogue book or digitalised listings. 

Film/TV this year was sadly mostly an off year. There are 2 Alice160 projects, but you'll likely see them next year. The P.A works anime Dive in Wonderland, with dual Alice characters, and the Russian/Estonian musical Alisa v Strane Chrudes. Both, oddly enough, have had very mixed reviews in regions that have had first release. Dive has been criticised for being too random and Alisa has been criticised for not adhering enough to the audio musical its adapting. Time will tell if these critiques are relevant for worldwide viewers of these works. 

I noticed the most in the UK, that events around Alice160 were almost always to do with the novels, or adaptations of them. This is fantastic, but the keen eyed among you may have noticed something. Apart from small things here and there, minimal mention of Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson himself! Unfortunately the biographical elements were mostly missing from this anniversary year. Culturally the UK seems somewhat keen to capitalise on Alice160, but very much not keen to talk about Charles Dodgson.

After 25 years of post myth research (Leach, Woolf, ect) I have to wonder why!

Cursed Alice found media: late night aired Channel 4 version

(Hetty Baynes as Alice and other actors at the tea party scene, in the TV special's first half. Image credit: IMDB)

This is a difficult one to talk about, sorry if I make any errors on the background. If you know more about this than me, its fine!

Channel 4 and Ken Russell (yes the UK director provocateur, you can see where this is going already) made in 1995 a version of Alice that for reasons unknown, relays the history of the Soviet Union/USSR, with particular focus on Russia. Channel 4 gave Russell the money out of the documentary side of the budget, so yes this does count as that. It doesn't feel like it for various reasons (I'll explain in a bit) but its technically a history documentary. The piece was called "Alice in Russialand" and it aired on late night channel 4, I believe airing twice in 1995 and 1996. It then vanished for decades, and finally turned up on lost media Reddit, someone finding it through a VHS tape from Brazilian 1990s TV, where it also appears to have aired, late night on an arts channel.

What is this version like? Despite NOT being extreme as Russell's other work (he was working to Channel 4 broadcast rules after all) it still manages to be eyebrow raising and rather alarming in terms of tone in many places. If you thought the Svankmajer 1988 version was creepy, goodness.

It doesn't start this way, though. It starts in a fairly normal satire genre place, somewhat similar to Pla's 1976 Argentinian version or 1988 Svankmajer, using political figures as stand ins for Wonderland characters. The atmosphere however feels off. As if there is something wrong with the tone of the work. You can see it in how Hetty Baynes acts as Alice. So sincere that she crosses over to creepy. She looks like Tenniel's illustration, except her smile is far too wide and she's far too detached from everything she comes across. Baynes plays this role perfectly. You will have chills.

7 year old Alice really just wants to see a ballet, but unfortunately for her, she's stuck in a history lesson which goes through 200 years of Russian/USSR history all the way up to 1995. You think this might upset her, an unwanted difficult, long history lesson when all she wants is to see theatre, but because of how off this version is, Baynes's Alice barely cares. Her journey in hour one is also a very quick Alice in Wonderland adaptation, going from doors all the way up to trial fairly faithfully. This part of the special is done like a Victorian style stage play, with elaborate and fairly beautiful sets. The most part of the special has a storybook vibe, despite the satire, until it doesn't. Remember this is absolutely not for children. Remember who the director is... 

Remember how off I said the entire special felt? This comes bursting to the forefront when Alice wakes up under a tree... and meets the cheshire cat. Immediately we're thrown off course. As every Carrollian knows, the cheshire cat comes FAR before, after the Duchess. What is he doing here? He's here to tell Alice he's from Chornobyl, and there, everyone died. The Cat seems to find this hilarious. Alice has to follow him, he apparently knows more information.

Now cat wants to show Alice and us, some clips about the USSR. Some of these are archival clips, some are cultural, some are artistic, and some I wonder if Russell just made up himself. The way the compilations of clips are organised are to be as jarring as possible. Some feature overlays upon overlays and dissonant sound. Again I think some of this may be edited by Russell. I couldn't find it confirmed. At some point, your jaw will be on the floor just due to the amount of clips and noise and distortion. As Alice sees 1995 new year across Europe, she finally wakes up...

Oh wait. She doesn't (again). No er.. Alice's reality with her sister is revealed to be just part of a massive book set. Those elaborate book sets from hour one were a part of it. There is no riverbank reality.  Baynes's Alice can't go home. She can never go home.

Sneaks up on you, doesn't it?

I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to. It is very much a curio. History scholars would find it interesting. Europe scholars would too, also film historians. People who like Russell's work would like this. Even though its intended as a documentary, the abrupt shifts in tone and the fact you are never sure where you sit with it, that's more psychological horror. I'm sure a normal documentary could have been done, but its the left turn halfway through this that you'll really remember.

Now also on Substack!

 This blog will now be cross-posted with Substack, so if you miss any posts on here, do look for them on there! Substack might in future have exclusive posts just for that, I've not decided yet.

Alice160: Reading Alice's adventures in Wonderland, in French, for the first time

 

(Photo source: Le boncoin, Magnard/Classiques et Patrimoine Alice au pays des Merveilles, schools edition. I highly recommend this edition for B1/B2 french learners. The footnotes make it way easier)

NOTE: Since much of this post is about reading the Alice novels for the first time or in a new language, it might interest you to know that the North American Lewis Carroll Society offers free readings of the novels to US schools. You can donate to this project here (Choose the Memorial fund option)

My first ever encounter, aged 7, with Carroll's novels (then Wonderland, I didn't read Looking-Glass until I was about 9 or 10) was with a dictionary in one hand, and the book in the other. I remember the dictionary was heavy, it was one of those that my family had sellotaped to stop it from pulling apart MANY times. I had to look up a lot of words on that first reading. No 7 year old alive in the last 2 centuries would know what a "bathing-machine" was, nor a "quadrille" unless they were very into dance. Despite the hard words, it didn't matter. I can't quite remember what my feelings on first reading were, except that this 100 + year old book somehow spoke to me in the way at the time 2000s era children's fiction could, only really half do.

(Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) 's original vision of Alice and the croquet game, illustrated in

Alice's adventures Underground manuscript)

In Wonderland, no adult or animal makes sense, Alice is (at least a first time reader who doesn't know the ending reads) alone with no help. She must rely on her own intelligence and her own perceptions. The things she is taught by other people, school, authority: lessons, poems, don't work in a chaotic world that is upside down. Alice is strong willed, and, for the most part, isn't really afraid of anything that gets thrown at her. Sure, Alice's adventures aren't real in narrative, they are a long, strange, asleep-for -too-long dream. The idea is one any reader can relate to, since we've all likely had at least one memorable one in our lives. Alice herself is brilliantly eccentric. Carroll informs us, Alice in the real world loves to pretend to be two people, views her cats as her best friends and equal to people, and maybe even scares the people around her a little. Its this that makes her such a fascinating and brilliant character, and somehow film and TV versions often fail to capture this part of Alice's personality. 

This summer, as part of my French learning attempts, I read Alice's adventures in Wonderland for the first time in another language. It was partly like going back to being 7 again. Lots of words I didn't know. Here a whole tense (Passé Simple) that was partly new to me. The translation I read was the very first one into French, from 1869, by Henri Bué. With footnotes for some words, of course. Bué's translation is for the most part very faithful to Carroll's text, except that its wonderfully french-ified. Alice attempts to speak Italian to the mouse, recites "monsieur corbeau" (mister crow, a fontaine fable, based on the crow and the fox) wrongly, and the Hatter recites a distortion of "ah vous dirai-je" a famous french Victorian nursery rhyme, with the exact same tune as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Little things here and there transplant the story not to Victorian England Oxford but to somewhere in the France French campagne (countryside) and this works brilliantly. 

There are, I'm sure, jokes I missed in Bué's translation, as an early B1 french learner, I'm almost certain. Then again, I missed quite a few jokes on my first reading of Wonderland in English aged 7/8, and that didn't stop me. 

I think sometimes when carrollians worry that children or teenagers will never pick up Carroll's books, and will never enjoy them "now". That publishers must produce abridged editions even for children who are old enough to read the two classics (I don't think age 7/8 is too young an age, even if all jokes aren't understood) We forget how some children will always be drawn to these stories naturally, including all the Victorian words that they don't understand. Folio Junior in France (in an edition I don't have) has footnotes, and a explanation of the author and characters and their world at the back after the novel itself ends. Puffin Classics in the UK do similar but somehow don't have footnotes for some words (why is this?) But, if a child connects with the novels, trust me, they won't really care about what a few words are, and might just look things up just to know. For some people, reading Carroll just fits their personality, or is a way of reading about dreams, or gives them a way of understanding a bizarre, complex world (which the adult world very much is, Carroll knew this as much as anyone) 

I think despite all the complex readings (and sometimes total mis-readings) us adults have given Carroll's two little books, to forget that they were intended for the enjoyment of the 3 Liddell sisters (all under 14 at the time of hearing these tales) is to deny ourselves of both these stories true meaning: fun, and things to read that aren't lessons. Any child can relate and will always relate to that.