Lookingglass Alice

Four Stars

CHICAGO—The Lookingglass Theatre is staging its dazzling production of “Lookingglass Alice” for the third time, and for the second consecutive summer. The theater should be mandated to bring this show to Chicago every summer, establishing a warm weather tradition in the manner of winter’s “A Christmas Carol.” That presumes that the company can retain its extraordinary five-performer ensemble with its inexhaustible energy and astonishing bag of visual tricks.

The show, of course, is the Lookingglass spin on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in an interpretation that Carroll likely would not recognize but would heartily endorse. The show captures Carroll’s whimsy and includes a considerable helping of his original text. Lookingglass also offers acrobatics and other theatrical embellishments that make the production so entertaining, and sometimes startling. The Lookingglass production runs about 100 minutes without an intermission, opening with a stunning visual surprise I won’t spoil by describing. Let it suffice that the show is worth seeing twice for that opening moment, one time sitting in rows beginning with A and another time in rows beginning with E.

But the story is secondary at Lookingglass to the staging by adapter-director David Caitlin and carried out by his quintet of athletic and inventive players. Which brings us to Lauren Hirte, the Alice in the original 2005 production and its two summer revivals. Hirte can act, draw gasps from the audience for her prowess and grace on various trapezes, and even play a decent clarinet. Hirte captures Alice’s little girl charm and determination and the production would be unthinkable without her.

Hirte’s four colleagues play multiple roles, wear multiple costumes, and perform with unflagging stamina and enthusiasm. Laurence DiStasi starts off as a wistful and melancholy Lewis Carroll and steals all the scenes as the White Knight cavorting perilously on a bicycle and unicycle. We first see Jesse Perez as a giant and very red Red Queen. Later he joins Anthony Fleming III as the hip-hop jiving Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Kevin Douglas rounds out the Fab Five cast as the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and other sundry roles. And there are the stagehands who enter the action from time to time, injecting modern realism into the evening and thereby enhancing the surrealistic flavor of the action. The wondrous visual moments include a wicket basket that spouts a dozen metal folding chairs, Humpty Dumpty plummeting from a ladder through an open trap door, and each time Hirte ascends from the ground for one of her aerialist exhibitions (with no safety net or safety cable in sight).

I thought this year’s edition was more raucous and busier than the first two, but that was fine with the bumptious and predominantly teenage capacity audience. I’m not sure the youthful spectators followed Carroll’s nonsense poems or Alice’s symbolic march through the chess squares, but they laughed and applauded all the gymnastics and comic bits, which dominated the evening. The technical credits remain exceptional, led by Mara Blumenfeld’s wardrobe of exotic and witty fantasy costumes, and Chris Binder’s dramatic, occasionally blinding, lighting design. Dan Ostling designed the scenery and Andre Pluess and Ray Nardelli the sound.

“Lookingglass Alice” runs through August 31 at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 North Michigan Avenue inside the Water Tower Water Works. Performances are Wednesday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Saturday at 3 and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $30 to $58. Call 312 337 0665. For more information, visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.

Click here to purchase tickets to Lookinglass Alice online or call 312.37.0665.

Copyright © 2008 Copley News Service