Alix in Wundergarten

★★

theatre review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes

By Alice Savile

Published 10 Aug 2016

39658 original

In a city where it feels like every second passer-by is desperately trying to drag you into a small dark room to watch them perform, outright hostility from a theatre company is almost refreshing. Cardiff theatremakers The Other Room and difficult stage have teamed up to produce a prickly piece of theatre that showcases actors at their audience-loathing worst.

Not even fluent German and an excellent working knowledge of Lewis Carroll's books will help you navigate the dark of this rabbit hole. It's set at a live radio recording where an audience of lucky, lucky prize-winners get to see broadcasting personality Nick Steed (Richard Elfyn) work his hammy magic on Alice in Wonderland. He's a delicious parody of the Stephen Frys of this world, always ready with a maddening anecdote or a batshit suggestion for the show's harried director.

But darker forces than rampant thespian egos are at work here. Its director—played by the writer of the piece, François Pandolfo—is bullied into changing the setting to West Germany, plunging the play into a neon haze of decadence, techno, and auto-erotic asphyxiation.

There's an exciting spontaneity to this semi-improvised chaos. But its reliance on racist humour and fat jokes feels like a lazy way of pushing boundaries. Pandolfo himself picks on an audience member who uses a wheelchair, patronising him in a voice usually reserved for small animals. The play's structure isn't sturdy enough to hold up a looking glass to this horrible bunch of actors: instead, it drags us right down the rabbit hole with them.