Under Brett Adam’s astute direction and design, Black Knight Dreaming is a splendid piece of work. The company has devised “visually and physically engaging scenes” with text from the original Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass peppered with appropriate inserts and quotes from other sources.

When you do recognise the quotes there is the added depth they bring and the lovely smugness of being in the know. One of the delightful aspects is that knowledge of the other sources isn’t necessary to understanding the use of the quotes, as care has been taken to weave them into the narrative in such a way as to make them pertinent.  

On entry Charles Dodgson is writing at his desk, placed to the side of the vast open stage. He is all coppery metallic sheen (Costumier Jessie Weber-Sparrow) and places us in the era while adding a dash of steam-punk. Large white sheets are placed randomly on the floor and a large white cyclorama upstage, suggesting blank canvases. They could be writer’s pages that have been dismissed along with their ideas; writer’s block; or pages waiting to be written on. They will also be very effectively used as various aspects of the story, becoming storm clouds, birds, a house, ways to swop out Alices (more about that later).

This is a key (pun intended) aspect of Adam’s design – the story told using the material it’s written on. The food and drink Alice encounters is two dimensional and as pallid as the rest of the cast’s costumes. Weber-Sparrow reflects the blank canvas, the company in a uniform of Alice dresses which are whites and creams – virginal, certainly, but also naïve, awaiting colour just as Alice is awaiting awareness of herself and her place in that, and this, world.

There are eighteen vignettes covering Alice’s journey and encounters. Each ‘chapter’ involves a different female company member becoming Alice in various tricksy and delightful ways. Adam’s use of minimal props and costumes puts the focus heavily onto the actors and his direction. While the rhythm of the show could use more dynamics, perhaps the effect of devising chapters separately, together they have very similar feels. And there are some difficulties hearing some of the company on opening night but my interest never wanes. 

I have always found Alice to be a bit of a wad of wet paper. Perhaps it’s the archaic nature of her vocabulary, or the prim Englishness that Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was poking fun at. In such a multi-coloured world of characters she appears so here. This is not a fault of the production at all; I think it’s a hard ask when playing the straight girl.

The company have a great time with the whacky inhabitants – Jacinta Compton’s Caterpillar and Angus Long’s Humpty Dumpty are highlights amongst a talented cast. Dodgson’s syllogisms and allegories are not for the faint-hearted and the company clearly understand the perverse and seemingly nonsensical witticisms, doling them out like candy at a party.

It’s not often I read the programme before seeing a show, but by chance I do so this time. Long Cloud Youth Theatre are using this production to look at Dodgson, Alice Liddell and her sisters’ relationship. Is this a child-like story or are there darker aspects to Dodgson’s infatuation, hinted at in the title? Had I not read this I don’t think I would have engaged with this question as a driving force under the production. And I feel the show clearly tells me the ‘take’ the company have rather than being put in a position to “make up your own mind”. In a post-Michael Jackson/ Neverland world (though I wonder if the company members are old enough to have been around then!), this is a wonderful discourse to be having and I feel a more risky work would have more effect on which side each patron might land.

Black Knight Dreaming has a lot going for it and it would be worth your while taking a trip with Alice and Lewis. 

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