Andrews – The Community Youth Players latest production – Alice in Wonderland: The Musical – kicked off Friday night at the Valleytown Cultural Arts Center downtown.
A recent adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale of a young girl traveling through a fantastical land, the musical, by Janice Yates Vogt and Mark Friedman, the two-act, 90-minute show is a delight for the eyes.
With longtime veteran of the ACT2 Players Judd Cresman at the helm in his first time directing, the cast of more than 30 local children, all under age 18, is more than vivid and vibrant.
With a psychedelic bent for props and sets, the property master and newly elected president of the Valleytown Cultural Arts Center Board of Directors, Tim Comstock, has created a truly wonderful look for Wonderland. From the black lights used to highlight day-glow backdrops and frames, the glowing mushrooms are reminiscent of both a 1980s mall Spencer’s Gifts poster and your older brother’s bedroom circa 1972.
In his second turn as assistant director, Sawyer Bradley has outdone himself in preparing the ensemble cast to bring their best performances at every turn.
In the lead as Alice, veteran actress Lilly Graham also does double-duty with great attention to detail as both makeup and wardrobe director. The Queen of Hearts’ costume is well worth the wait to watch.
Graham brings her sultry soprano belting tunes through the venue as she slips back and forth easily from her “veddy proper” British schoolgirl accent. Nothing affected with her elocution, which easily lends an authenticity to the fantasy of slipping through the looking glass indeed.
A sweet nod to literature’s favorite duo, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, played by Temperance Burson and Jaxon Hughes respectively, bounce into Alice’s scene with their delightful do-si-do’s and doodle-dee tune, “I’m Tweedle Dee, and I’m Tweedle Dum,” with plenty of puns and laughs for everyone.
Another veteran of several performances, Russell Frederick brings a foppishness to the Mad Hatter that he obvious relishes. With his high, high hat and his colorful costume, Frederick both sings and rings true as he delights with the tune “It’s Always Tea Time” during the seminal tea party sequence so well-known as Alice’s true introduction to Wonderland’s characters before her infamous showdown with the queen.
As the queen, and in her debut as a leading character, Amanda Fleischer regally commands the stage during her trial of both the Knave of Hearts – played by Bianca Curtis, who sports the best-drawn pencil-thin mustache of recent memory – and Alice and, well, everyone as she threatens the famous line “off with their heads!” including the audience, as the rowdy crowd of the Card Guards along with Two, Five, Seven and Nine of Hearts billow into the crowd for a few playful jabs with their silvery swords, adorned with aluminum foil.
Shayla Dyer does an amazing turn as the Cheshire Cat, commanding her feline presence “purrr-fectly” as she both serves as Alice’s spirit guide bringing to mind Dante’s own journey led by Homer through another imaginatively layered location and as she flounces her beautifully blue blacklit costume and as she lounges about on a 9-foot-tall living tree stump fashioned by Cresman, adorned with bolted-in limbs and topped with shrubbery to create the realistic effect of a cat tower ready for play.
Dyer, an accomplished veteran actress with the troupe as well, also helped out when Fleischer lost her voice just two days before opening night.
When faced with potentially losing one of his leading ladies, ingenuity prevailed and Cresman and the ladies devised a plan that was flawlessly executed with only two days practice that, while Fleischer was onstage, Dyer would be in the balcony speaking the queen’s lines while she pantomimed the actions.
Rounding out the most featured of the classic cast, Kellen West, another longtime veteran of CYP productions does a particularly entertaining version of the Caterpillar. Trading in the decidedly antiquated hookah for a more modern sensibility-friendly Zero Tolerance Policy Soda Bottle, the Caterpillar lounges upon two hand-built toadstools that glow duskily purple in the black light.
West’s take on the character trends as a kind of “Hey Mon,” “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” trippy-hippy pre-chrysalis critter. Truly an earworm, the song “I’m A Caterpillar” is a highlight of the show and attended well by the ensemble of exuberant Pop Up Flowers, Addison Burnette, Addalyn Jones and Kendra Wilson, who serve as back-up singers.
The March Hare, who apparently knew all too well about Springing Forward, is speedily and fleetingly played by Kyia Zane with her large clock, a la Flavor Flav, and her “late” lateness permeating the production as a reminder that although time is fleeting and we’re always running, everything happens at the right time.
With the additional tune “It May Take A While But You’ll Get There” from the Mock Turtle, deftly and leisurely played by Liv Daughtery, Alice’s lesson is cemented as she’d previously lamented being “too small for this and not grown enough for that.”
That theme is prescient on the heels of our own time change, reminding us in this fairy tale of sorts that we can either rush this life or take it as it comes, make-believe or reality, it’s our perceptions and reactions to our experiences that make the full measure of our lives. Heady stuff for mere child’s play.
Last chances to catch Alice in Wonderland: The Musical are at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday.
Details: Visit facebook.com/ACT2Players