Alice's Adventures in Gymnastics

Wonderland is one loony labyrinth in ''Lookingglass Alice,'' the Lookingglass Theater Company of Chicago's gravity-defying, if at times stubbornly earthbound, version of Lewis Carroll's 19th-century children's classics ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and ''Through the Looking Glass.'' Adapted and directed by David Catlin, it is now on stage at the McCarter Theater in Princeton.

The Lookingglass company, an improvisation-fueled theater consortium of playwrights, actors, directors, musicians, choreographers and designers, has a curriculum that includes training in dance, gymnastics, circus, film and musical composition. I was enchanted two years ago by its production at McCarter of ''The Secret in the Wings,'' a ghoulish yet visually exquisite retelling of lesser-known fairy tales directed by Mary Zimmerman, a member of the ensemble.

Some of the same low-tech stage wizardry that made ''Secret'' so magical is on display in ''Lookingglass Alice.'' A blue ''wave'' of fabric serves as a ''sea of tears.'' At the sound of the word ''Hello!'' two dozen folding chairs pop out of a picnic basket. A call to prepare for the ''Royal Coronation Ball'' results in a barrage of beach balls that bounce into the audience.

The gifted company members seem to spend more time defying grafity than walking around onstage. Lauren Hirte, as Alice, swings, swoops and spins on rings, ropes and bungee cords as she tumbles through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole in search of her Wonderland. Larry DiStasi, as the desperately eager-to-please White Knight, rides his majestic ''steed'' (first a decrepit bicycle and later a unicycle) with giddy abandon. Anthony Fleming III and Tony Hernandez literally drop from the sky as the double-talking Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, and Mr. Hernandez teeters precariously on stilts as the Red Queen. Then there is Doug Hara, a poignantly isolated Humpty-Dumpty, leaving his ladder in a death-defying plunge.

These are all moments of high excitement. Yet ''Lookingglass'' seems longer than its running time of 90 minutes (without intermission). With a chess match as its format, moving Alice forward one square at a time until she is crowned queen, it has lengthy interludes of linguistic musing and convoluted wordplay, often in Lewis Carroll's classic ''Jabberwocky'' mode. They make for some heavy-duty listening.

Billed as ''for ages 5 to 105,'' the show was greeted with less than universal enthusiasm by my guests -- children aged 6 and 11 and their grandfather, upwards of 70. They found the story rather confusing, and said it might have helped if they had read the books first. Even though I had done my homework, I had to agree: I, too, found it hard to follow.

For those adults and their charges who have read the original, Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, remains an interesting literary oddity. Over the years, his books have been seen as either whimsical fantasy or surreal nightmare. They have been examined for every conceivable subtext and have provided countless Ph.D. candidates and literary deconstructionists grist for the publication mill.

For today's young readers, used to the instant gratification of the video screen, the books may seem overly mannered. Yet Alice and her buddies remain in our literary psyche, a phenomenon that may strike some as ''curiouser and curiouser,'' to quote the acrobatic heroine, but continues to inspire companies like Lookingglass. It's too bad this production failed to take flight.