Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Opera Holland Park

This new take on Alice in Wonderland is one of the most charming, least condescending operas for children that John Allison has ever seen.

Energy: Will Todd's new family opera, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in Holland Park Credit: Photo: Alex Brenner

New York’s Central Park has its famous Alice in Wonderland statue, but London’s parks have never honoured Lewis Carroll in the same way.

Now Opera Holland Park, which since 1996 has been resident every summer in west London’s green landmark, has made the family opera Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland its first-ever commission, and premiered it in the sylvan surroundings of the Yucca Lawn.

The result is one of the most charming, least condescending operas for children I have seen: hardly surprising given OHP’s wise choice in the composer Will Todd. No stranger to children’s works or the operatic stage, Todd has written a piece that sits naturally somewhere between opera and musical theatre, shifting its styles from contemporary coloratura to the blues as each situation demands.

Todd’s instrumentation is skilful, too, allowing every word of Maggie Gottlieb’s clever libretto to be heard over the dozen-strong band in open-air acoustics. A cushion of strings supports brass, piano, percussion and accordion – and thanks to the conductor Stuart Stratford and a strongly projecting cast, no detail is lost in an action-packed narrative, drawn from both the Alice books.

The darker side – or malice in Wonderland, as Gottlieb has it – is never shirked, and contemporary updates include the Mad Hatter’s threat of an ASBO.

Leslie Travers’s costumes reflect this mixture, embracing picture-book fantasy, while evoking both the book’s original Victorian background and a grim corner of Seventies Britain – the opening and closing scenes are set in black-and-white Grimethorpe, in particular its pet shop, where Alice meets her Rabbit.

Martin Duncan’s engaging production spreads the seven scenes of the 75-minute work around four performing areas, including a giant tea table, and requires the audience and pied-piper musicians to promenade between them. Moonlighting as a research assistant, my almost eight-year-old son was not alone in being totally engrossed.

Leading the excellent cast, many of whom double their roles, is Fflur Wyn, a wide-eyed, bright-toned Alice. There are star turns from Hanna Hipp (as a manic, menacing Mad Hatter) and Keel Watson (as the hookah-pipe smoking, basso profondo Caterpillar).

James Cleverton is an elegant Rabbit, Patricia Orr a ditzy Duchess, and John Lofthouse a gallant White Knight. No self-respecting new opera comes without a counter-tenor these days, but James Laing justifies it this time with his fantastical Cat.

Until August 3. Tickets: 0300 999 1000, operahollandpark.com