The Characters Of “Alice In Wonderland” And “Peter Pan” Are Reimagined In An Original Modern Play
by Heather Cassell
Wander down the rabbit hole into an artist’s mind as she struggles to balance living creatively and sanely in order to function in the world.
This is Alice’s (Anne Yumi Kobori) world in Every Day Alice, which has its last performance tonight at PianoFight in San Francisco.
Anne, who wrote and stars in the play, takes the audience into Alice’s head through her hallucinations and sober moments when she’s on and off her medications.
The play starts off with a Mad Hatter’s tea party in the psychiatric hospital while Alice is working on a new novel. She is in the hospital due to losing her mind after the publication of her first successful book.
Throughout the play, even after being released from the hospital, Alice struggles with balancing her medications. The medications numb her creativity. When she’s medication-free her creativity is stimulated, but also causes her manic and hallucinating moments which invoke Wonderland.
At the same time, her boyfriend Peter (Joshua Marx) struggles with providing a safe and stable home for Alice and his desires to venture out into the world, something Alice wants to do too. Unfortunately, they are trapped by their fears of how to do that with Alice’s mental health condition.
Alice’s hallucinations take her back into Wonderland where she meets the Hattie, who is the Mad Hatter, and Queenie, who is the Queen of Hearts (Katie Rubin), who turn things upside down for her, but also provide much comic relief in the play.
Avshalom/Smythe (Norman Gee) rounds out the cast playing both the doctor at the hospital and Captain Hook’s right-hand man. The Avshalom/Smythe characters attempt to bring sense back to Alice by negotiating with her friend and publisher James/Captain Hook (Ben Euphrat) and her to bring her back to a more balanced normalcy: A normalcy that doesn’t have such a dramatic effect upon her imagination.
Underpinning Alice’s mental health situation is her connection with James. James is married to Alice’s best friend, the mute Isabel/Tinker Bell (Jessica Uher) who wants to have a family, but James isn’t quite on board with that plan.
Isabel is mute due to experiencing a traumatic situation. She loses herself in her dance career always flittering off to the studio.
Relationships unravel under the strains of chasing creative goals, growing up, and remaining authentic to their individual dreams while managing daily responsibilities, particularly in Alice’s ever-changing mental state. At the same time the bond between Alice and James grows stronger.
The characters should be familiar to most. The play brings the beloved characters created by Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie’s children’s stories together in a modern setting, but it isn’t necessary to know these stories to enjoy the play.
The play is the latest from Anne, founder of Utopia Theatre Project, which produced the performance. The play was directed by the independent theater company’s artistic director Maryssa Wanlass.
While the play isn’t a musical, there are a couple of moments where notes and song punctuate the scenes with James’ deft piano skills and song. Without the musical moments, the long scenes in the 90-minute performance where the couple’s quarrel and struggle amongst themselves and Alice’s spiraling out of control and back into controlled mental states might have become exceedingly uncomfortable.
Discomfort is the point. While there were many scene changes and blackouts that disrupted the flow of the play, I question the purpose or necessity of some of them that might have been done more seamlessly with a little more imagination with the stage direction. There were definitely moments during the play where the long scenes were necessary for effect, that brought the audience closer into view and perspective of what the characters were grappling with.
Despite the play being derived from in the ever-popular cannon of reimagining fairytale characters and super heroes it is a meditation about what it means to live a creative life and to dispel the myth and romanticism of the mad artist.
Mental health isn’t something to be dismissed and it certainly isn’t only afflicting people in the realm of creatives, while history certainly highlights it and romanticizes it.
Anne expresses a very real issue in an artistic way through Every Day Alice that is thought provoking and skillfully brought to life by the actors.
It definitely makes the audience pause for a moment and think about the connection between art and mental health and the sacrifices or negotiations that have to be made by the artist and the artist’s community. Creativity affects everyone, because without imagination and bringing ideas into fruition the world would be quite dull, just like being on medications.
THE APPLAUSE
“Every Day Alice,” PianoFight, 144 Taylor Street, San Francisco, California 94102. 415-816-3691. . pianofight.com.
TYPE OF EVENT: Independent Play, Woman-Owned Theater Company
CURRTAIN UP: Characters from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan” live in a modern creative world struggling between their desires to be authentic to their art, themselves, and the responsibilities of adult-hood.
SHOWTIME: 7 – 8:30 p.m., second stage
THE TICKET: $$ = $25- $75
(Price of average ticket to enter the event.)
RATING: 3
(5 = midnight blue; 4 = black; 3 = Aqua; 2 = orange; 1 = gold; and 0 = green)
VIBE: Intimate environment that helps create the intense atmosphere as the audience peeks into on artist’s struggles with a creative life and mental illness.
SCENE: A hip, independent urban theater tucked away behind a bar.
DAZZLE ME AGAIN: The intimate setting of the stageand the relationship between the actors and the characters was authentic carrying the audience away into Alice’s world, but you can still have a drink in your hand from the bar while enjoying the performance. After the performance you can mingle with the actors at the bar.
SERVICE: Very good. Warm. Friendly. The playwright’s mother greeted audience members.
WHERE TO NEXT?: Tonight is the last night of the performance.
WORTH THE OUTTING?: Had a good time, but I’ve seen better.
Book your next getaway to Broadway with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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