wonder.land

[horton]

Saw this at the weekend- it's like the National decided to throw a huge budget at one of the Connections project scripts- or a GCSE devised drama exam.



So much money and effort spent on something with so little to say: so the best way to overcome cyber-bullying is by attacking your headteacher? Adults talking AT twelve year-olds whilst with all the credibility of dad's dancing at the disco.



I liked the music but the lyrics were banal at best, diabolical at worst. The audience was muted throughout, but rallied a little for the "Knees up Mother Brown" bows music.



Lord help us if this is the agenda under Rufus Norris. I pray he realizes he genuinely can't direct musicals.

[stevemar]

I saw this over the weekend and possibly with the dire reports on the previous forum (and generally poor reviews), found some aspects to enjoy still. I think the concept of the story is a good one, and the video design, staging and costumes (even the laughable mouse) were certainly different. However, the music was a ragbag of styles working against the singing/lyrics, which were generally trite and crude. No memorable tunes (although this doesn't have to be fatal to a musical, but it helps). I felt a bit sorry for the musicians and actually talented cast ( the lead and headmistress made the most of their roles) in having to battle with the songs. A failed experiment.. So in the words of a school report, I would be tempted to say "must try harder" but actually they actually tried too hard to create something that was "relevant" but were undermined by a lack of talent in the song writing and execution of the storyline. The 90% full theatre and many kids seem to enjoy it though.

[mickeyjotheatre]

I can't bring myself to go and see this based on what I've heard. I have a few friends who are excited to try and get tickets and others who said it was the worst thing they've ever seen.

I just find the promo campaign irritating, it's the digital age 'glitchy' graphic that's supposed to appeal to young people because young people love it when things buffer on the internet...

[Deleted]

Based on the word of mouth, I was expecting to really hate this show and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be not only bearable but also not so horrendous that I had to flee at the interval. For me, the main problem was that the writing team clearly has NO IDEA how videogames actually work, which was the single most jarring thing about the whole enterprise. I disagree with the general principle of "write what you know", largely because I love fantasy and would rather read books about dragons than books about software engineers, but if the thing you're writing about *can* be researched then you *should* do the research.

[viserys]

Baemax, I just came here to say (almost) the same thing. After all the negativity on the old forum, my expectations were sub-zero, which probably helped. I really only stuck with it, since I was stuck with the evening flight home anyway and had nothing else to do.

So, the bad things: Yes, the music was lame, I had expected MUCH better of Albarn. Yes, the costumes and stage sets were fairly naff and silly, but when you live in the land of Regietheater nonsense, nothing in London can possibly faze you. I was filled with admiration for Carly Bawden to be able to dance in those Lady Gaga-shoes

So here's the but. Despite all the obvious flaws, I felt that the show had its heart in the right place. I truly felt for Aly and was engaged with her story (which is more than I can say for some shows). As someone who had a similarly cr*p time at school, I knew fully well how she felt and how much relief she felt in fleeing into the virtual reality of wonder.land. Back then, we had no internet. I fled reality into "novels" I wrote. If the internet had been around, I'm sure I would have got sucked into virtual worlds like WoW myself. Even know at my grand old age, I know how much I care about characters I've created on online games, much like Aly created Alice. I know how many players create characters "as different from them as possible" and how much these characters mean and how you'd fight to get them back if someone hacked your account.

This said, I agree with Baemax, that the writers have few clues how MMORPGs and similar video games work and that all of this should have been done differently. The cartoonish Queen of Hearts was also rather silly, I believe this character could/should have been fleshed out more to understand her motivation in taking over Alice and then wonder.land. I also really liked the finale/final message of Aly realizing that it can be enough to be "just her" in real life.

So, anyway - yes, there's lots of wrong in this show, but I've seen worse in the theatre and I didn't have a bad time at all.

Though talking of theatre etiquette - the guy next to me didn't just smell bad, he reeked of unwashed clothes and unwashed self in a way that was truly offensive. Luckily the seat next to me on the other side was free, so I could lean that way turing the first act, then sat in that seat for the second act. I don't know what some people are thinking.

[posull78]

Is this going to last to May at the National and why isn't it readily available on cut price seats? Took this off my list to see for our London visit when the reviews came out.

[Deleted]

I agree - not nearly so bad as I was expecting. In fact I got to the interval thinking it was perfectly good; a few dodgy moments, not stand out music and painted with a very broad brush, but fine and coherent. Unfortunately after that it literally lost the plot and went a bit mad. It seemed to me that they came up with the internet = rabbit hole concept (which I think is a good one) and then struggled to come up with a decent plot; perhaps the insane phone-stealing teacher (clearly nicked from Dahl) struck them as being ok on paper but they clearly couldn't make it work in practice, despite post-Manchester overhauls.

But I still wasn't tempted to leave and the time didn't drag at all; Aly and the younger characters were rather charming, and I like a nice bit of colour on stage.

On the critical side, I cannot remember a single tune now, which is not a good sign, and some of the staging was very shonky - the caterpillar should have been a lovely moment but it just looked really amateurish. And there was one classic bit of cringey musical theatre cliche which I thought had died out with the dodo, when the kids in the game finished their song and burst out in fake laughter as a full stop. Made my bloody run cold. Could just be a personal hate - always reminds me of the Spice Girls.

Overall I would class this as a noble failure and I don't really understand the level of hostility that it attracted on the other board. I wouldn't necessarily say run out and get a ticket but if there's a deal going it's worth a gander. And I certainly wouldn't urge people to return their tickets. Unless you hate glitter. In that case, this really isn't for you.

Three stars - was hoping for better, but I've seen much worse.

[crabtree]

What is it about Alice that she suffers such abuse at the hands of directors. I watched some of the recent film on TV last night, and that is as much a travesty of the source material as is wonder.land. What did Alice do to deserve such treatment.

[Deleted]

Jan 30, 2016 10:30:28 GMT crabtree said:

What is it about Alice that she suffers such abuse at the hands of directors. I watched some of the recent film on TV last night, and that is as much a travesty of the source material as is wonder.land. What did Alice do to deserve such treatment.

She's a woman. ;-)

[Jan]

Has made its debut on TKTS I see. Runs till April doesn't it ?

[DebbieDoesDouglas(Hodge)]

Also, lots on at the Natalie has been on tkts recently. Could slag them off but I'm going to applaud their commitment to uncommercial fair/fare. Shame it's all been sh*te too

[Jan]

Feb 2, 2016 0:37:42 GMT DebbieDoesDouglas(Hodge) said:

Also, lots on at the Natalie has been on tkts recently. Could slag them off but I'm going to applaud their commitment to uncommercial fair/fare. Shame it's all been sh*te too

I think the slight problem with wonder.land is that it wasn't intended to be uncommercial fayre and was scheduled accordingly - I think they should look to the Young Vic and schedule shorter runs that they can extend or revive if things prove popular. 

[Deleted]

Feb 1, 2016 20:40:58 GMT Jan said:

Has made its debut on TKTS I see. Runs till April doesn't it ?

Hardly debut - it's been on there a few times previously. Not necessarily helpful for families though, I'd imagine it's hard to be spontaneous amidst the homework and clavichord lessons.

I know people love to jump on the "what were they thinking of" bandwagon but, as I've said before, if you could predict what shows will be successful, everyone would do it. I think I recall that The History Boys was originally scheduled for a really short run because they thought it would have very limited appeal. I can understand why they thought this would sell better than it has - there's a good idea there, they just haven't managed to pull it off.

[Deleted]

In reply to Jan Brock, the Young Vic has dark weeks between shows which give the scope to extend. The NT theatres are never dark, except for a week before previews of a new production and occasionally for scheduled maintenance work.

In the Peter Hall days, the plays were cast from within an acting company and so each NT theatre had three plays in the current rep which could be flexibly programmed at shorter notice with reference to actual demand. Now that most productions are individually cast, each theatre only has two shows in current rep and so there's very little scope to programme flexibly in response to actual demand.

[Nicholas]

Wow. I’d heard the rumours. I’d read the news. But nothing could prepare me for the actual, unbelievable awfulness of what befell me last night. I’m still reeling. So, a slightly different write-up: it’s a game of “What’s the worst thing about Wonder.land”?

Is the worst thing about it the patronising, ignorant, superior and idiotic writing from its three (three!) writers, who clearly don’t know about working class life, teenage lives, online gaming, or the actual internet itself? At school, we used to have House Drama competitions, and every year there were a couple of entries of ‘issue-tainment’ types where 14-year-olds would write about the important issues teenagers faced (i.e. bullying, cyberbullying, broken homes), and this felt (particularly due to Albarn’s juvenile rhymes) like something the 14-year-olds at my school wrote, only worse. There’s a Stephen Merchant skit where he performs a ‘GCSE Drama’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dji4jk85MUo) and it’s that! It’s just that! This features a young-ish headmistress baffled by the notion of portable internet usage, all teenagers treating posting on each other’s Facebook walls as the height of human interaction, cyberbullying as a silly little nothing nothing, human bullying as a silly little nothing, and so much else that’s patronising, snobby falsehoods that anyone with a window out of which to look would know is outdated and incorrect.  It feels like they used ITV2 as research. It suggests ‘adults’ don’t need the internet whereas ‘teenagers’ are fools for needing nothing but. Its plot is ‘the internet is strange’ in a way I thought we all got over years and years and years ago, its interest in how cyber-lives work was nil and its understanding of the internet was, for three (three!) writers, unforgivably shallow. That’s the whole show – unforgivably shallow.

Or is the worst thing about it its terribly delivery of a pat message? A musical about a bullied overweight girl who eventually learns to say that you can’t stop my happiness because I like the way I am is a novel idea – except maybe casting someone overweight, or making a skinny person look overweight, would have more of an impact than seeing Chimimba look skinny and complain about being fat. A musical about an evil headmistress getting her comeuppance at the hands of her pupils is a novel idea, if there is anything approaching realism to their construction.  Saying to a clearly self-hating and damaged gambling addict that it’s OK to be a bit zany seems to ignore the fact that he’s a man who wants and needs more help than a vomiting baby puppet can give. The message of ‘be yourself’ would mean more if the writers hadn’t mocked and misunderstood Ally throughout.

Or is the worst thing about it Albarn’s songs? His forced and obvious rhymes are key-stage-one standard (I’ve got a notion for eyes like the ocean) and his music isn’t just the unhummable unmemorable anti-showtunes you get from hiring someone musically inadequate to ape Sondheim, but at times was just painful to my ears in hitting the wrong notes. Everyone loves Charlie, everyone loves Charlie.

Or is the worst thing about it its depiction of addiction? Online gambling is a serious problem, but here is passed off as zaniness. Internet and gaming addiction is a serious problem, but is here patronised unforgivably. I was hoping Ally and her dad would go round the corner to where Emma was getting treatment, as there they’d find an author who understands that addiction isn’t clear cut, sensible or pleasant, but in all ways deserves serious attention, not mockery. It’s like the wonderful People, Places and Things was compensation for this wilfully patronising and ignorant writing.

Or is the worst thing about it its depiction of the working classes? Rufus previously directed Broken, a sensitive if flawed and simplistic look at the working class of Britain (though I was no fan of the London Road movie, which undid much of that and equally mocked the lower class), but here a broken family is something to laugh at, a state school is a grey grim hellhole and all teenagers seem to be yobbos and chavs. This culture was portrayed as a thing to be mocked – everyone loves Charlie, everyone loves Charlie. In that, it’s actually quite offensive that the head of our nation’s theatre treats the working class with such disdain as to mock them like this. It’s patronising in the extreme, but at least it goes with how patronisingly it treats mental illness and addiction.

Or is the worst thing about it its depiction of teenagers? It stands in direct comparison to the much maligned Mermaid, one of my shows of the year, and shows how right I was to love it – that was, like this, about a girl who struggles to fit in and is bullied, so invents (by writing, one of her many hobbies, unlike Ally who has one hobby and no intellectual interests) a fictional compatriot in a world she can control for security, only to understand the real world more through this. The difference is that had brains. That treated teenagers as little unformed adults, intelligent if with much to learn, intellectually and societally aware, passionate, varied and interesting. This treated teenagers as idiots.

Or is the worst thing the fact that the three fantastic lead performances from Anna Francolini, Lois Chimimba and particularly Carly Bawden (who manages to bring humanity to a technical cipher in the same way Alicia Vikander did in Ex Machina, albeit with more dancing in high heels) are utterly wasted performing such substandard material?

Or is the worst thing about it its ending – not one of its three (three!) writers could see that the headmistress had committed a crime in stealing her pupil’s expensive phone, assuming her identity online, committing cyberbullying, and inciting self-harm and suicide from the other members of wonder.land. The actual ending rushes a happy tableau and ignores the psychological ramifications to such an extent it’s reminiscent of the near-parodic way Hill-Gibbons directed the final scene of Measure for Measure. It’s the most unhappy happy ending you could hope to see this year, given that the villain is overcome through the writers being idiots and victory is won by ignoring the cyber-world in which Alice has probably just caused at least one suicide. Hip hip hooray, and merry Christmas from the NT.

No.  The worst thing, simply, is this: it’ll never be on DVD. This has cult movie status written all over it. It’s like Reefer Madness The Musical with the ironic layer taken off. It’s like The Room, or The Wicker Man – moment after moment fails to do what its three (three!) writers want it to do, yet attempts it with such aplomb it’s amazing. It’s prime drinking game material (drink every time someone says “Charlie”), it’s vintage ‘mock mercilessly’ material, and all I could think was that it’s a crying shame I’ll never watch this with friends on a Saturday night. Moment after moment after moment is so bad that, once recorded, it would become iconic. It’s not quite So-Bad-It’s-Good, because it’s so patronising and mocking that it leaves quite a sour taste, but beyond that it’s majestic. In fact, I might go back, pick the furthest corner seat in the circle, bring in a hipflask and laugh myself silly. It’s sh*te. Nothing about it redeems it. It’s a must see. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie. Everyone loves Charlie.

P.S. Weirdly, and most egregiously, there was no need for this to be Wonderland. The allusions were forced at best – those random playing cards, the random guillotine, the random forced connections between the real world and the Alice mythos. Ultimately it’s about online lives and how characters we create online help and hinder us in reality and little else – it’s The Nether for stupid people, and given that I thought The Nether was soft-touch anyway that means it’s very stupid indeed. When it comes down to it the ending isn’t a high-stakes world-worrying battle as to whether Wonderland will be destroyed or not, but instead whether a young girl can go onto, in essence, a chatroom. That’s what got me – I ask you, what kind of stakes are ‘Being unable to talk to strangers online’, and who gets that passionate, angry and upset over the closing of a forum?

[crabtree]

and that it draws people in with the connections of Alice and gives them this overproduced claptrap, which has nothing to do with the spirit and charm and well thought through logic of Alice.

[sayers500]

Feb 3, 2016 3:09:33 GMT Nicholas said:

His forced and obvious rhymes are key-stage-one standard (I’ve got a notion for eyes like the ocean)

I preferred 'Now I'm not alone, like a toenail all ingrown'!

[horton]

Feb 3, 2016 16:37:56 GMT sayers500 said:

Feb 3, 2016 3:09:33 GMT Nicholas said:

His forced and obvious rhymes are key-stage-one standard (I’ve got a notion for eyes like the ocean)

I preferred 'Now I'm not alone, like a toenail all ingrown'!

I thought Albarn did the music but Buffini the lyrics.  At least I hoe so- it would explain why they are so abysmal!

[horton]

PS It also struck me as being Key Stage 3 Drama on a ridiculous budget!

[kathryn]

Feb 3, 2016 3:09:33 GMT Nicholas said:

 and who gets that passionate, angry and upset over the closing of a forum?

Erm......

[loureviews]

Feb 3, 2016 3:09:33 GMT Nicholas said:

The worst thing, simply, is this: it’ll never be on DVD. This has cult movie status written all over it. It’s like Reefer Madness The Musical with the ironic layer taken off. It’s like The Room, or The Wicker Man – moment after moment fails to do what its three (three!) writers want it to do, yet attempts it with such aplomb it’s amazing. It’s prime drinking game material (drink every time someone says “Charlie”), it’s vintage ‘mock mercilessly’ material, and all I could think was that it’s a crying shame I’ll never watch this with friends on a Saturday night. Moment after moment after moment is so bad that, once recorded, it would become iconic. It’s not quite So-Bad-It’s-Good, because it’s so patronising and mocking that it leaves quite a sour taste, but beyond that it’s majestic. In fact, I might go back, pick the furthest corner seat in the circle, bring in a hipflask and laugh myself silly. It’s sh*te. Nothing about it redeems it. It’s a must see.

No.  It's just sh*t.  That's the different between proper cult movies and rubbish.  Although Reefer Madness probably comes pretty close to the former if it were not for the ironic layer ...

[DuchessConstance]

Feb 3, 2016 3:09:33 GMT Nicholas said:

A musical about an evil headmistress getting her comeuppance at the hands of her pupils is a novel idea, if there is anything approaching realism to their construction.

Which is essentially Matilda, but the last thing Albarn et al want to do is remind people "hey, you could be half a mile away watching Matilda right now if you'd only been a bit smarter in your ticket booking."

[crabtree]

so have they finally put this show out of its' misery, well, till it heads to the Chatelet at least.

Please do not bring it back......I still shiver at the awfulness of it. sounds as if it has a rival now, the Cymbeline at the RSC. We do some great theatre in the UK, theatre that inspires and excites and challenges and stays with you, but then......

[BurlyBeaR]

Threads merged.

[horton]

The cast album is out now and I eat my words slightly as the score (mostly) holds up slightly better than I recall on the recording. Still no excuse for the terrible production but at least I can now see where people thought it might have potential.