Welsh National Opera may have seemed to have disappeared down a rabbit-hole these last 15 months, but they’re now bouncing back with outdoor performances of Will Todd’s family opera Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And there’s no denying that Lewis Carroll’s perennial zaniness is a tonic for these times. Using the original Martin Duncan production commissioned and staged by Opera Holland Park in 2014, the piece has transferred easily to the paradise of Dyffryn Gardens, birdsong everywhere, swallows and martins overhead.
With a quartet of Victorians to move the promenading element along, most of the Wonderland familiars – together with Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the White Knight from Looking-Glass – are faithfully rendered by Todd and librettist Maggie Gottlieb: Benjamin Bevan’s White Rabbit is suitably twitchy, Feargal Mostyn-Williams’s countertenor Cheshire Cat has the toothiest grin, Kelvin Thomas is the hookah-smoking, blues-singing Caterpillar.
Alice’s challenge is to end the “malice in Wonderland” perpetrated by the Queen of Hearts. Maximising the “Off with their heads!” moments, Adam Gilbert’s Queen is suitably over-the-top, Aoife Miskelly is impressive both as the Drink Me! bottle and the Duchess who, improbably, pairs off with Helen Jarmany’s Mad Hatter, while Fflur Wyn, who first created the role of Alice for OHP, is again the out-and-out star. A gifted actor, her warmly lyrical soprano carries effortlessly.
Given the indestructibility of Carroll’s fantasies, what feels awkward is Todd and Gottlieb’s framing device, whereby Alice encounters the White Rabbit in a Grimforth pet shop when she and her family take shelter from rain. When everything comes full circle, the rabbit in his cage gives Alice the thumbs up, signalling that she wasn’t dreaming. Isn’t the dream the point? Todd’s score is an eclectic mix, nursery-rhyme Humpty Dumpty sitting next to dissonance. Stylishly played by the WNO ensemble, his jazz idiom works best, the elisions into Sondheim/Loewe territory less inspired, but, as a show, it’s all slickly and wittily done.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is at Dyffryn Gardens, Vale of Glamorgan, until 3 July.
* This article was amended on 1 July to correct a mis-heard lyric.
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