Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.
`It’s—it’s a very fine day!’ said a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face.
`Very,’ said Alice
Art for Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland by Gertrude Kay
Like Alice in Wonderland by David Lynch - Quote from Telegraph Critic Mark Brown
Content warnings for: Mental health portrayal, also one NSFW scene involving a talking goat. No really.
Premiered: Edinburgh festival, 2006
Good god, I adored this script.
For an Alice-type tale aimed at an adult audience this is one of the best I’ve read.
Poor Lisa Jones. She’s been tasked with finding a “lost hour” of her life in Dissocia, a place that makes Carroll’s dreamworlds of Wonderland and Looking-Glass World look mildly hospitable. Soon after meeting a bizarre watchmaker with unusual drinking preferences, and after hurtling down a lift shaft, Lisa tries to contend with insecure security guards, a man who has literally lost his inhibitions, the worlds most horrifying scapegoat and a friendly polar bear- who sings about death. But there’s also the Black Dog, a ruthless monarch who terrorizes Dissocia’s residents, plunging the land into war.
Neilson, a Carrollian by name - he’s actually adapted Carroll’s Alice in 2017, no less- plays around with Carrollian ideas so much it makes your head spin.
On one level, thirty-something Lisa is a hybrid of lost protagonists found in surrealist works and Carroll’s Alice. Except that Lisa is not seven and a half and not innocent. Her Alice-like wonderment masks a darker insincerity- she’s actually suffering a ton of problems at home and has a strained relationship with boyfriend Vince. This being Neilson, there may be a real chance that Lisa may never make it back home.
And then act 2 pulls the rug from underneath your feet. I’m not going to spoil it, but any hints that Lisa’s misadventures are actually the result of something much darker are very very true.
The journey she undertakes too, is fraught with darkness at the edges. If Carroll’s Alice books have vaguely uneasy characters (The Duchess, The Queen of Hearts, the pig baby, the train passangers, the mutton) and a slightly off kilter atmosphere, then Neilson takes this idea and runs with it. In Dissocia, no one is what they seem and even the nicest of people and creatures that Lisa encounters seem to be hiding something implicitly.
One gets the sense of Neilson setting up Carroll-esque plot tropes, only to take them in newer, creepier directions. The scene with the Goat is flat out horrible, as is Lisa’s attempts to deny the situation by singing, ending in her curling up into a ball and crying in horror.
If anything, Neilson’s Dissocia shows us that for characters, falling down a rabbit hole or going through a looking glass in childhood may be wonderous and slightly unnerving, doing this in adulthood may be their undoing. That rabbit hole may end up leading to a far darker place than you expect.
Brrr...
I’ve never been quite sure on this film, to be honest. I know that a lot of people love it and some people can’t stand it. But I’m sort of in the middle on this one. There’s some really good parts and some not so good parts.
Part 1 adapts Alice in Wonderland and part 2 adapts through the Looking-Glass. The screenwriter also adds a subplot about Alice wanting to be older and to grow up, and introduces the idea of her adventures teaching her a lesson. Although this might sound awful it is actually well executed for the most part and blends in well with the stories. Carroll’s dialogue is often watered down a bit, but this is a hollywood-ized version of the Alice stories if you will, so its sort of expected and not too annoying.
However the songs are quite a different thing, like the performances of the actors, the songs are either really good, OK or terrible. Unfortunately the worst song “I hate Dogs and Cats” sung by the mouse, is the first one we hear. The songs do get better and are really good in the Looking-Glass adaptation.
In terms of actors, Natalie Gregory’s Alice takes a long time to get used to as she is not Carroll’s Alice but by the time we get to part 2 we’ve warmed to her more. The acting again ranges from the good (Sammy Davis Jr as the caterpillar, complete with tap dancing “You are old Father William” sequence, surely one of the highlights of the Wonderland adaptation, also Ann Gilllian as the Red Queen is great, one of the best parts of the Looking Glass adaptation) and the not so good (Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle)
I like the fact that this film attempts to adapt both books back to back and fully. We actually get a fully fledged adaptation of Through the Looking-Glass here, which is really nice to see. On the flipside Carroll’s dialogue is often thrown out of the window in some scenes.
For example when Alice talks to the gnat in the Looking-Glass act, he simply warns her not to go into the wood. I would have liked to have seen the conversation that’s in the novel about the looking-glass insects. But what is in here is very good, we get the Walrus and the Carpenter as well as You are old father william and The Lion and the Unicorn. Most of Carroll’s poems are here, if not all.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this adaptation and despite its flaws, I really admire its overall ambition to dramatize more of Carroll’s stories.
