Songs for Alice

The strange white rabbit and the mysterious Cheshire Cat, the fat Duchess, the egg faced Humpty Dumpty and the fabulous Jabberwocky, the extincted Dodo or the rowdy twins Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum: by no means are they nice figures out of a harmless children’s story, but ludicrous representatives of a bizarre logic of the absurd and of an underlying desire. The mathematician, writer and photographer Lewis Carroll invented them to entertain his little girlfriends and collected their stories in the two novels Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which became classics of the world literature.

Songs for Alice extracts the poems from both volumes and transforms them into scenes and songs. Puppeteer and musicians carry us off into a somnambulant twilight zone of imagination and moments of revelation which show, why Carroll’s Texts aren’t just great children’s literature but also inspired a diversity of artists like the writer James Joyce, surrealists like André Breton, the cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter or the British comedy group Monty Python.

Directed by Hendrik Mannes, this production walks the line between theatre and concert with soulful hits and noisy explosions, expressive puppets and poetic machines, quiet moments and great ballyhoo, catchy tunes and last dances.

The White Knight: “But here I must leave you. – You are sad, let me sing you a song to comfort you.“
Alice: “Is it very long?“
The White Knight: “It’s long, but very, VERY beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it – either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else.”
Alice: “Or else what?“
The White Knight: “Or else it doesn’t, you know.“