The Comedy
Parody
Steve Nallon’s Adventures in Wonderland also captures the flavour of Carroll’s original literary parodies but again the show has its own contemporary targets.
Lewis Carroll’s tale was distinctly anti-authoritarian and anti-moralistic. Carroll enjoyed poking fun at the sententious moral platitudes found in the children’s literature of his day. He turned the then well-known poem “Against Idleness and Mischief” into “How Doth the Little Crocodile” (featuring the fish-eating crocodile with ‘gently smiling jaws’).
Pictured below: Quinten Metsys, A Grotesque Old Woman [1513], thought to be the inspiration for John Tenniel's drawing of the Duchess (see above), who in this show is played by Ann Widdecombe.
Steve Nallon in his Wonderland show follows the Carrollian tradition when
he parodies the famous Sunday school hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful”.
In his version the hymn becomes “All Bums Big and Beautiful”, sung
with sugary sentimentality by Julie Andrews:
All bums big and beautiful,
All bottoms great and small,
Knickers are so wonderful
They stretch to fit them all.
