The Themes
| Changing Identity | Death | Social Class Distinctions |
| Rule and Misrule | Language | Meaning in Dreams, Nonsense and Puzzles |
Changing Identity –
“Who are you?” said
the Caterpillar.
In Steve Nallon’s Adventures in Wonderland both Steve Nallon and Alice are shape-shifters whose identities and dimensions are liable to change. Steve is an actor using his vocal ability as an impressionist to physically morph himself into various characters, creating a new celebrity ‘cast’ for Carroll’s classic tale. Alice on the other hand is not only constantly changing size by eating cakes and the like, she is also constantly told she is someone else. She is taken for a house-maid, accused of being a pigeon, turned into a living pawn and is generally not herself at all. Steve Nallon as an impressionist is by definition never himself and in effect the heroine Alice becomes not who she is but who people decide she is as she changes from size to size and from episode to episode.
The capacity to be other people, and to see ‘ourselves’ as others see us, is part of growing-up. Play, pretend and, of course, imitation, are all part of that process for when we pretend we imagine ourselves outside of ourselves. We become someone else looking in. In Wonderland Alice experiences other perspectives of herself by becoming different shapes and sizes. More importantly though she encounters ‘herself’ through the perspective of other creatures.
In Steve Nallon’s Adventures in Wonderland Alice’s changing identity is taken a step further than mere size. In the show Alice becomes not so much big, medium and small but different versions of herself across a variety of social levels – upper, lower and middle. ‘Alice’ the upper class lady is played by Penelope Keith. Later Maggie Smith with her northern vowel sounds of the lower-middle class becomes yet another ‘Alice’. The would-be upper class ‘Alice’, who is not quite to the scale of the real upper class lady, is played by the social climbing Hyacinth Bucket (Patricia Routledge).
This multi-character ‘Alice’ is a modern social satire using the basic principle of Carroll’s original multi-sizes Alices. By giving ‘Alice’ a series of different identities across various heights and levels of social status in British society the show is also reflecting a theme of class distinctions that also runs throughout the original book. In the Lewis Carroll story Alice is truly worried by the prospect of being a poor child like ‘Mabel’ and offended that she is taken for a servant girl.
Alice’s simple aim throughout the story is to become ‘herself’. The irony is, as with a playful game of pretend, that we can begin to know ourselves better when we become, at least for an hour or two, other people. In the show this becomes a major theme. It is not just through meeting other people that Alice learns more about herself, it is also by being other people (through pretending) that Alice can eventually become herself.
So what is the answer to the question posed by the Caterpillar? Ironically, only when we no longer feel the need to answer such questions as “Who are you?” do we become who we are. Perhaps the answer is, “I am who I am and who I am requires no definition”.
