I’m running late. Even after years of living in Chicago, I’m terrible at judging how long it takes me to get around while driving. Despite Googling the address where I’m meeting my “Rabbit,” I’m finding myself staring at an empty storefront devoid of people. Manically scrolling through my phone, I see that the store has moved to a different address, one that’s three blocks away.
Running as fast as I can to the store’s new address, I notice some oddly out of place elements. There’s a young woman sitting on a hillside with dying balloons and the beginnings of a smile on their face. There’s another young woman engrossed in a book and a person wearing a full head mask of a bunny watching nearby. While surely odd to those enjoying their early Saturday afternoon, these sights provide comfort to me because it means I’m on the right track to enter “Wonderland” as created and overseen by Upended Productions for their current immersive show Alice, an adaption of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Arriving with moments to spare at our starting location, I’m handed a name tag already labeled with the name “Alice,” a role I’m sharing the other audience members who are sporting identically written name tags. Once we are adorned with our name tags, the French Rabbit (played by John Gregorio) rushes up and introduces himself as our guide with a ponderance on what is and isn’t real, informing us to be mindful in Wonderland. Alice runs shows back to back, starting 15 minutes apart, each audience group on a set track that leads them through Wonderland by a different rabbit struggling with a question they’re looking to have answered.
The French Rabbit then leads us to 12 different locations on our journey, each inspired by one of the 12 chapters found in Carroll’s book. Each location comes with commentary about social norms we abide to without being aware of them.
At the first location, a group of Dodos separated the audience into groups of three, rapidly firing questions at us. One Dodo asked “Coffee or tea?” and my response of tea was drowned out by the other two audience members response of coffee. With no time to debate and the Dodo pressing us for a unanimous decision, I deferred to the group’s choice over my own.
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Later on, we sat at a tea party making polite chit-chat with the guests already there until the previous tea party guests decided they wanted to have a meaningful conversation among strangers. Devised by contributing theatre company ShowParty, I found this interaction deeply moving since I find having to play the game of “death by a thousand conversations” at parties wasteful, since you spend so much time speaking to someone without learning anything about them.
Another highlight came from the children’s company Mudlark Theatre. We found ourselves in a classroom and were taught a lesson that made absolutely no sense. Yet, by being present and responsive, we “graduated” with high marks without learning a thing, remembering how I breezed through high school by simply providing the answers required without learning the significance of the answer’s worth.
Alice is a remount of a previous immersive experience that’s once again set against the backdrop of downtown Evanston, the city just north of Chicago accessible by the “El” public transit system, showing how closely the two cities are linked. But while each interaction on our journey through Alice was thought-provoking and engaging, rarely did the physical location provide any boon or support the action occurring there. Our journey through Evanston took us down many streets, alleys, and through storefronts, but a majority of our experiences occurred in non-descript basements that are cluttered with mundane items for everyday usage, overwhelming the immersive interactions occurring in some of these basements. Enjoying a lounge singing performance by Laura McKenzie about mid-life crises in the basement of a brewery, leaning against the walk-in freezer, only served to detract from the song. While the interactions transported me to into Wonderland, rarely did the locations do the same.
In ending our journey, the French Rabbit returned us to the discussion of what is real, having us think carefully about what we had experienced in Wonderland. Were the crazy, opinionated characters of Alice any different from the everyday people milling about in Evanston that afternoon? Perhaps by daring to speak to something greater, I feel the inhabitants of Wonderland are onto something people won’t openly discuss, daring the audience to get crazy in their thinking about their lives.
While the locations added little to the experience, Upended Productions’ Alice is filled with engaging moments that leave me thinking about the role I play and how breaking out of the norm can lead to some gratifying revelations on friendships, values, and society. I’m thrilled I spent a playful afternoon interacting with the characters of Wonderland to really take stock in my own role in life.
Alice runs again on June 22 & 23rd in Evanston, IL. Tickets are $25.
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