Here’s a nice YouTube video of Max Ernst’s illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Wunderhorn (“Miracle Horn,”) 1970, and “Die Jagd nach dem Schnark” (“The Hunting of the Snark,”) 1969. The music is “Oiseaux Exotiques” by Olivier Messiaen.
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Lewis Carroll accused of being on… crack? That’s a new one.
We normally let this type of article slip by unremarked, but this one was too good. Jerry Della Femina, who writes a column called “Jerry’s Ink” for the Long Island Press, published a rant last week titled “Was Lewis Carroll on Crack?” It is supposed to be a humorous piece about a grandfather suffering through his grandchildren’s school theater (the horror!) But besides his profound point that the Reverend Dodgson was freebasing cocaine, Della Femina’s thesis seems to be that no one likes Alice in Wonderland and no one has ever liked Alice in Wonderland. There’s some sort of conspiracy or vicious cycle dating back more than a century keeping it in the canon. I can think of at least one or two members of the Lewis Carroll Society who would disagree.
…Do you know a single human being who ever liked Alice in Wonderland? When you talk about over-rated pieces of doo doo, Alice has to be on the top of everyone’s list. And yet, since 1865, when it was first written by Lewis Carroll (while he clearly was on crack), we have had the Alice in Wonderland conspiracy, which has been passed on from parent to child.
Every child comes out of the womb hating Alice in Wonderland, but from the moment they are born they are force-fed the Alice treatment. They get started with musical mobiles spinning Alice characters around their cribs. They are read to sleep by the Golden Book version of the book…they watch Alice cartoons…they are forced to sit through Walt Disney’s interminable flop version. As they mature, they realize they’re bored, but they don’t want to break their parents’ hearts and tell them that this so-called classic is a stiff.
Then they grow up and have children of their own and what do they do? They inflict this moronic, confusing book on their own children. And if that’s not bad enough, every once in a while some jerk at the movies (last year it was the 3D bomb version starring Johnny Depp) or one of the networks takes a shot at boring the entire nation with still another version of Alice in Wonderland. There’s even been a porno version of Alice, and for crying out loud, that was boring too (er…er…that’s what they tell me).
Wonderland vs. Wonderland on Broadway?
Wonderland: A New Musical (formerly known as Wonderland: A New Musical Adventure) started previews today, March 21st, at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. It stars Janet Dacal, who created the role of the “modern-day Manhattan mom named Alice” in Tampa Bay, alongside former Miss America Kate Shindle as Mad Hatter. It will open officially April 17th, assuming multiple actors don’t break bones and it gets pushed back six months.
However, there’s some other Broadway buzz which might cast a bandersnatchian shadow over the proceedings. Disney, whose Broadway franchises include the hugely successful Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, has announced they will turn their Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, the sixth highest grossing film of all time, into a Broadway Musical. And Tim Burton himself has agreed to help with the design. Linda Woolverton, who wrote the screenplay for the movie as well as the screenplay for The Lion King and the scripts for Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast and Aida, will be writing the script for this also.
If Wonderland: A New Musical is a long-running hit (as composer Frank Wildhorn’s previous shows Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel have both been), could there be dueling Wonderlands on Broadway!?
Meanwhile, here’s a “sneak peek” of the new Wonderland: A New Musical, if you can’t afford the $49-$132 ticket price.
Meg Hunt’s Classy “Picture Book Report” of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Illustrator Meg Hunt has some cool Alice in Wonderland illustrations on her website www.meghunt.com. “For 2010, I decided to curate a big narrative project with several friends entitled Picture Book Report,” she wrote. “Every month we will create a new illustration in a series devoted to favorite books of ours.” These look great, Ms. Hunt, we’d like to see them fledge out into a full-scale illustrated AAIW!
There’s some quasi-related merch on her site – a groovy notebook with an “Live the Love in Wonderland” cover for $18. And, it looks like she also did an illustration of Alice going through the Looking-Glass for a Radiolab live show (an excellent NPR science storytelling show) which was about symmetry. “What better way to showcase that than with the Looking Glass from the second Alice book? If I were to ever illustrate Through the Looking Glass, I would use these colors I think– they had a limited palette for the show, but I really like how it worked out.” Thanks Adam for the tip.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Wonderland
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet has just finished their premiere run of a new “Wonderland” choreographed by Shawn Hounsell at Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall. It was there till March 13th, but it will now begin a worldwide tour of Canada, ending at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, April 28th to 30th. Paula Citron’s dance review in The Globe and Mail has a nice headline: The story wanders, but ‘Wonderland’ looks wonderful. Was she expecting a linear plot in a ballet adaption of Lewis Carroll? Here’s Citron’s critique:
On the darker side, Hounsell has made Alice (Jacelyn Lobay) an older woman who is looking back through the rabbit hole at her dreamlike journey. That fantasy allows her to escape the mundane, but at the end of a second visit comes the reality check: Alice, and humankind in general, cannot escape into fantasy forever.
Hounsell’s problem is that, while he has fashioned Carroll’s famous characters with some skill, he has not really been able to portray the more serious parts of his vision. There is rather a disjointed quality to the choreography, and the voiceover text, while helpful, does not completely fill in the gaps. [Continue reading here.]
I wonder if adapters will ever tire of the older-Alices-returning motif, or if it’s chronically perennial? Here’s a little more of her review:
Beloved ballerina Tara Birtwhistle, looking like a 1980s Lady Gaga [What? -Ed.] with platinum hair, bright red bell bottoms and an Elizabethan collar, is a harridan of a Queen of Hearts. Using her megaphone, she shouts a stream of insults and orders, and of course her trademark “Off with their heads!” In my favourite line, she chastises the orchestra for playing too many notes.
There’s some more glowing review quotes from the RWB’s blog here.
And RWB has a series of videos about their Wonderland:
A Year In Wonderland | Episode 1 – Part 1 from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet on Vimeo.
The Daguerreotype that was not Dodgson or The High Price of Mistaken Identity
Dr Michael Pritchard, a regular contributor to the British Photographic History Blog, has alerted us to his cautionary tale about the uncertain world of eBay bidding. The above daguerreotype, which if you can’t read it is captioned “Charles L. Dodgson Christ Church 1858,” recently sold on eBay for £3,300, about $5,300. The image, if you can’t see it either, is clearly not of Dodgson, in fact the sitter looks more like a cross between Benjamin Disraeli and the Mock Turtle. The suspicious back story to the sale and the insights of the photographic experts all make interesting reading here.
Atomic Antelope detonates another amazing Alice app
Atomic Antelope’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland digital pop-up book for the iPad was not just a best selling app for the new tablet device, it was also one of the most innovative eBooks on the market. The New York Times ran an article last November complaining that, with the possibilities in the touch-screen age for cool interactive books, most of the releases were “boring.” The Alice pop-up was one of their “honorable exceptions.” It wasn’t just games or angry birds, it was actually the full Carroll text with the Tenniel illustrations that moved and danced as you played with them.
Guess what!? Atomic Antelope is back with more Alice, released this week. This time, her adventures are in the Big Apple. Judging from the illustrations, it’s their variation on Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in New York appears to also have something to do with physics. It’s available for $8.99 in the iTunes store. I’ll let the specs and screenshots speak for themselves:
You loved Alice in Wonderland. Now join her in New York! Touch, tilt and shake your iPad to bring this amazing book to life. Meet Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Lion and the Unicorn and dozens of other classic Lewis Carroll characters. This book is from the same publisher that created the blockbuster “Alice for the iPad”. as seen on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Take a tour of Manhattan with the Red Queen as your guide. Ride with Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their taxi. Meet the Frog and the Fawn. Ride an elevator through the Empire State building. Attend a fireworks party and eat oysters with the Walrus and the Carpenter. Plus lots, lots more.
Alice in New York is a groundbreaking adaptation. A special celebration of the 140th anniversary of Through the Looking Glass, first published in 1871. This incredible iPad book includes a new story and never-before-seen color illustrations that transport Alice from Sir John Tenniel’s original drawings and into modern New York.
Just a few highlights of this magical book:
• 140 years in the making!
• Explore New York for the first time with Alice
• Enjoy 136 beautiful digitally-remastered pages
• Feast on 27 fully interactive illustrations
• Be stunned by pictures that come to life as you tilt your iPad
• Based on a Lewis Carroll classic, with illustrations adapted from Sir John Tenniel
• Delight in the physics engine that responds to your touch
Leave us a comment if you have any opinions about the new app; we poor far-flung bloggers have no iPad.
75 Aniversario de la muerte de Alice Liddell – paintings by Leonor Solans
Thanks again to Adriano Peliano at the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil, and her lively blog AliceNations, for posting pictures from this beautiful exhibition at the Biblioteca de Andalucía en Granada, Spain, from 2009. It’s called “Alice’s Adventures under Ground. 75 Aniversario de la muerte de Alice Liddell” by Leonor Solans. There are more images at the AliceNations blog, and she also embedded this video of the show set to the great Tom Waits song “Alice”:
[…] Y aunque la sombra de un suspiro
quizá lata a lo largo de esta historia,
añorando esos «alegres días de un estío de antaño»
y el recuerdo desvanecido de un verano ya pasado…
no rozará con su infeliz aliento
el mágico encanto de nuestro cuento.-Lewis Carroll
We all know that the original Alices of John Tenniel are to rigid and formal to allow flows of subjectivity, body sensations, subtle feelings, vital experiences. These Alices of Leonor Solans welcome Alice in her dive in the potency of life. The exhibition is sweet and delicate, the song of Tom Waits fits perfect.
Errol Morris & Errol Morris write two different essays with identical words on New York Times blog
I wasn’t expecting postmodern philosophy when I opened the New York Times Opinionator blog this week, but there was filmmaker Errol Morris rambling on about truth, relativity, Jorge Luis Borges and Humpty Dumpty. It appears to be the fourth of a five-part series called “The Ashtray,” no doubt what he was staring into when he starting questioning existence and art. Part Four, “The Author of the Quixote,” is named after Borges’ story about Pierre Menard, a 20th century Frenchman who wrote a book called “Don Quixote,” which has the identical text to Cervantes’ book of the same name. Borges’ book review of it complains that Menard’s 17th Century Spanish seems affected, unlike Cervantes. Read the whole Morris essay here, which drags in a long quote from Through the Looking Glass. “…It addresses the issue: can words mean anything we want them to?” asks Morris. “Humpty-Dumpty is suggesting an ‘authoritarian’ theory of meaning. Words mean whatever I want them to mean. It is easy to see it as an earlier version of ‘The Ashtray Argument.’”
Popular New Destination for Alice in Wonderland Tourists
FoxNews.com reports that Antony House, in Plymouth, UK, has seen a “huge increase in visitors” since Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie was released in March 2010. The mansion (pictured above) was used in filming the non-Underland parts of the film.
Antony House, near Plymouth in southern England, was lucky to attract more than 20,000 visitors a year before director Tim Burton chose the mansion as the setting for his adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s famous fantasy adventure.
Since “Alice in Wonderland” was released last year, more than 100,000 people have traveled to the quiet location that was previously most famous for its displays of flowers.
Emma Quan, of UK charity The National Trust, said that 2,000 people turned up on a single day during the Easter vacation.
“For us, 600 [people] is a very busy day. We had to have people at the top of the drive turning visitors away,” she said.
If Antony House wants to continue to capitalize on this windfall, they might want to fledge out their Carrollnalia. May we recommend adding some Live Flowers to their gardens?