A Noise Within makes theatrical magic for audiences of all ages in their absolutely captivating revival of Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus’s 1933 Broadway adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland.

Though perhaps not everyone has read the Carroll original, I’ll wager that quite the opposite is true of the 1951 Disney animated classic, which means that even without perusing ANW’s handy program synopsis, the characters Alice encounters on her adventures through the looking glass will be instantly recognizable.

What sets A Noise Within’s Alice apart from its many previous stage and screen adaptations are the ever so ingenious ways director Stephanie Shroyer has found to bring Carroll’s characters to vividly colorful life while shaving the original Broadway cast of thirty down to a mere eight performers, all but Erika Soto’s irresistible Alice portraying multiple roles each.

This means that audiences will get to savor one exquisite gem of a featured turn after another, including:

Susan Angelo’s Mouse, King of Hearts, and her endearingly clutzy White Queen;

Justin Lawrence Barnes’s Dormouse, Sheep, Lory, and his stunningly statuesque Queen of Hearts;

Bert Emmett’s Dodo, Mock Turtle, and his ukulele-strumming charmer of a White Knight;

Rafael Goldstein’s Tweedle Dee, Caterpillar, and his weird and wonderful Mad Hatter;

Julanne Chidi Hill’s Red Queen, Cheshire Cat, and her adorably oval Humpty Dumpty; Gabriel Leyva’s whimsical White Rabbit; and

Kasey Mahaffy’s March Hare, Gryphon, and his wild and wacky Tweedle Dum.

Goldstein’s Dum and Mahaffy’s Dee may earn the evening’s loudest, longest cheers as the scene-stealingest Tweedles in town. but there’s not a single character or performance that doesn’t hit the mark, thanks also to costume designer Angela Balogh Calin’s supremely fanciful confections, from colorfully plumed birds to crimson red royals to top-hatted Victorian gents.

That director Shroyer and her brilliant design team–scenic designer Frederica Nascimento, lighting designer Ken Booth, sound designer Josh Grondin, wig and makeup designer Shannon Hutchins, and props master Erin Walley–have achieved all of the above at a teeny tiny fraction of what it would take Hollywood to replicate the magic is a salute to the power of live theater and an audience’s ability to imagine the impossible.

Add to this Grondin’s gorgeously gossamer score, both background music and tunes to fit Carroll, Le Gallienne, and Friebus’s lyrics, and you’ve got an Alice In Wonderland to transport audiences far far away from troubling headlines and dire predictions to a place of childhood enchantment sure to linger long after Alice’s return to reality.

(Jacob Houser is stage manager and Amber Goebel is assistant stage manager. Angela Santori is assistant wig and makeup designer. Grace Gaither is light board operator. Angela Gulner, Trisha Miller, Jeremy Rabb, and Frederick Stuart are understudies.)

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

-Steven Stanley
March 7, 2020
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Tags: A Noise Within, Eva La Gallienne, Florida Friebus, Los Angeles Theater Review, Louis Carroll