Tell us a bit about Alice’s Adventures Underground and what separates it from any other show.
It’s completely different to anything else. From the audience’s point of view you are split into groups and whisked around a bizarre series of vignettes that knit together into a story of revolution, before recombining for the final scene. And from the actors point of view we rotate through five different parts, doing one part each night and repeating each scene 12 times per night!
What’s it like performing in such a different venue?
The Vaults are well suited to the story as you actually are underground. It comes with its difficulties though, like its strange layout, lack of facilities and dampness, but we’ve managed to overcome most of the challenges.
And how are you interpreting and finding playing the Mad Hatter and your various other roles in Alice’s Adventures Underground?
The story is so full of bizarre characters that we’ve got quite a bit of freedom to come up with bold characterisations. It’s always fun to approach roles where you know nothing is off the table at the start. As for the Hatter – Initially I looked into mercury poisoning and inspirations for Carroll’s character, but in our world the Hatter has been stuck down there on loop for 150 years so there’s freedom to extrapolate. The tea party is the domain of the Hatter and Hare. We are in control and that is really enjoyable. I think most audience members are a little scared of us, and rightly so, we can pick on whomever we like.
