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The Blog of the LCSNA

Do I detect the odor of Frumious Bandersnatch?

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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, out of North Hollywood (as witchy a place as there ever was), has released no fewer than three dozen specialty fragrances themed after Wonderland & Looking-Glass: Mad Tea Party: The Dodgson Collection. Scents inspired by the madness of Alice’s sojourns to Wonderland. They can each be ordered for $17.99 per 5ml bottle. The online catalog for the Mad Tea Party collection includes full quotes from Carroll’s books and poems, and even the ingredients used are carefully chosen to fit in with each scent’s motif. The seven sub-categorized in “The Garden of Live Flowers” naturally have floral ingredients to match the theme, but even the monsters and lobsters have perfectly fitting recipes. Here are a few for example:

FRUMIOUS BANDERSNATCH
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Bandersnatch musk, redolent of spicy carnations, wild plums and chrysanthemum.

THE POOL OF TEARS
‘I wish I hadn’t cried so much!’ said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. ‘I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.’

A sea of salty tears drowning out Alice’s light floral perfume.

IMPERIOUS TIGER LILY
`O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, `I wish you could talk!’

`We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: `when there’s anybody worth talking to.”

Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice — almost in a whisper. `And can all the flowers talk?’

`As well as you can,’ said the Tiger-lily. `And a great deal louder.’

(Tiger-lily, ginger root, neroli, purple fruits, and frankincense.)

BREAD-AND-BUTTER-FLY
`Crawling at your feet,’ said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.’

`And what does IT live on?’

`Weak tea with cream in it.’

Bread, lightly buttered, with weak tea, cream, and a lump of white sugar.

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Euro-Pop Trio of Alices on the Antwerp Stage

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The Belgian Pop trio K3 will be starring in “Alice in Wonderland le Musical” in Antwerp, April 9th through 25th, 2011. I can’t embed the promo videos, but I highly recommend them – link here.

K3 appear to all be playing Alice, but in three different colors. Here’s a google-translated description (from the Dutch) of the show:

Karen, Kristel and Josje bored and the three of us going to the movies. Once at the cinema arrived, they end up in the story of Alice in Wonderland. They decide to go Alice warn all that lies ahead, but they are all too late. Their search for Alice is full of surprises and nothing is what it seems. […]

‘Alice in Wonderland’ takes you on a magical adventure in a magical world of fantasy. Are you going to Karen, Kristel and Josje last?

3D World first:
In the musical “Alice in Wonderland ‘for the first time in a musical world use 3D sceneries. The same technique is used to show 3D movies in the cinema.

Visitors of the musical will get a pair of glasses for the 3D effects to be observed. The public has the ultimate experience to sit in the middle of the story and together with K3 to adventure in the wonderland of Alice in Wonderland.

The musical promises to be a unique total experience with a live orchestra, spectacular 3D scenery and breathtaking costumes.
The story of the musical is based on the famous, written by Lewis Caroll, story ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “(1865) and its sequel” Behind the Looking Glass and what Alice found there “(1871).

I thought live theater was in 3D already?

UPDATE: Thank you Europopped for e-mailing us that K3 has already released an Alice-themed video this year!

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Stop-Motion Hunting of the Snark in 2012

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Assuming the filmmakers don’t meet with a Boojum, there will be a British stop-motion animation of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark released in 2012. Our very own Andrew Sellon (LCSNA President emeritus) recorded some voice over work, including the role of the Judge!

The Hunting of the Snark is an animated feature about a group of strange individuals that embark on a voyage with the aim of capturing “The Snark,” regardless of the fact that none of them even know what it is, or how to catch it, the film is  directed by Saranne Bensusan with several other confirmed crew members.

Their website is here, there is a twitter you can follow for updates, and a facebook fan page. Here are a few pictures of the process:

Early version of The Baker
"Bathing machines"
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The Month of the Mad Hare

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Littell's Living Age, Vol. 68, 1861

Happy first of March, month of the Mad Hare! “Happy Hare! Happy beyond the lot of many mortals to be mad only once a year!” Read more about the many madnesses of March in The Outlook, Vol. 19, published in January (Why not March? Madness!) 1907, by clicking on the image below.

The Outlook, Vol. 19, January, 5 1907

Wishing you all a little madness this March.

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Alice on the West Bank

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Alice in Wonderland at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin

A stage adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is currently running at The Freedom Theater in the city of Jenin on the Northern West Bank of the Palestinian Territories.

The show is being co-directed by Isreali Palestinian actor, director, and activist Juliano Mer-Khamis and by Zoe Lafferty, a 24-year old director from London. Reviews and interviews on the websites of Al Arabiya and The Guardian say that the technically dazzling show is being performed to sell-out audiences.

Interestingly, although the connection is not made, the plot described seems to follow Tim Burton’s adaptation: Alice discovers Wonderland while fleeing a forced engagement, and returns home newly empowered to make her own choices. Excerpts featured in the YouTube trailer (to the soundtrack of Blondie’s “One Way or Another”) suggest the production owes a debt to an even more unlikely source – The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

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Riddle: What kind of cat can grin?

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“A hanging chain forms a Caternary”, image from Wikipedia

Answer: A Caternary

The best jokes are the ones you have to look up the answer on Wikipedia to get. I prefer the one that postures “Which would a logician chose: between poutine or eternal bliss?” Poutine: because nothing is better than eternal bliss, and poutine is better than nothing.

The caternary joke was in the Canadian magazine Queen’s Quarterly, in their Fall 2010 issue (Vol. 117). (The QQ magazine we assume is like GQ but for a much smaller demographic.) The 22-page article by Canadian author David Day was called “Oxford in Wonderland.” It’s not available online, but here is a summary from the QQ website:

From the beginning, it was apparent that beneath the fairy tale level of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland there was a strong element of autobiography and satire of mid-Victorian society. It was fairly obvious that the characters and places in Wonderland had a counterpart in Oxford. All of Lewis Carroll’s biographers and literary critics delve to some degree into this kind of historical “Who’s Who” of the Alice books. Some of these Carroll identified himself; others he was at pains to keep secret. Nevertheless, if we walk carefully in Alice’s footsteps, some fascinating new characters will step into the light. It began “all in a golden afternoon” with a real boating excursion on July 4, 1862, on the Isis, a branch of the Thames River passing though Oxford, when two young college dons rowed and picnicked with three pretty adolescent girls on their journey upriver from Folly Bridge to Godstow village.

For much of the magazine spread, Day identifies many of the historical persons whom Day believes Wonderland characters were based upon, various Oxford personalities and friends of Carroll. For instance, his Cheshire Cat identification:

from “Oxford in Wonderland” by David Day, Queen’s Quarterly (vol 117 – Fall 2010)
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Temporary mark down of Fishs Eddy Alice-ware

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Fishs Eddy, makers of of commercial quality dish and glassware, are currently offering 20% off their Alice in Wonderland line.

Cindy Watter, who sent us the tip-off, advises “This is a restaurant style product for heavy use. If you dropped a plate on your foot, you would break your foot before you broke the plate” – so, not the preferred flatware for throwing at babies or pigs.  Each dish, glass, mug, and coaster is illustrated with Tenniel drawings. They also make a pretty cool tote bag, now priced at $10.36.

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Nonsense & Biology in Sunday’s New York Times blog

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A pigeon from one of Edward Lear’s books.

Author Richard Conniff wrote an entertaining post for the New York Times blog Opinionator yesterday. It starts off at sea in a Sieve with the Jumblies and ends in the Tulgey Wood, all to discuss the relation between the Nonsense poets’ zoology and the age of 19th Century scientific exploration, which turned up many fanciful new creatures. “Charles Darwin himself could sound as whimsical as Lewis Carroll,” writes Conniff. Read the whole article here, and here’s an excerpt:

A pigeon from one of Edward Lear’s books.

[…] But it never occurred to me that there might be a direct connection between the two worlds of nonsense verse and biology. Then one day I picked up an old print of a tropical pigeon species and noticed the “E. Lear” in the bottom corner. Though he is celebrated today mainly as the author of such works as “The Owl and the Pussycat,” Lear had started out as a naturalist. His first book, “Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots,” drew favorable comparisons with Audubon when he published it in 1832, at age 19.

Like many naturalists, Lear described the natural world not just in literal-minded scientific detail, but also in fanciful doodles and verse. And when this blossomed into books for children, he often dispatched his characters, like naturalists, on wild explorations to the back of beyond. He also had them devote considerable energy to collecting the oddities of the country:

And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.

Nonsense was almost a byproduct of natural history. The twin themes of exploration and taxonomy, were “present in the genre as a whole, even in Lewis Carroll, who had no special interest in the subject,” according to the French scholar Jean-Jacques Lecercle, in his 1994 book “Philosophy of Nonsense”: “The reader of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is in the position of an explorer: the landscape is strikingly new … and a new species is encountered at every turn, each more exotic than the one before. Nonsense is full of fabulous beasts, mock turtles and garrulous eggs.”

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See the new Broadway Mad Hatter: Former Miss America Kate Shindle

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Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch blog posted pictures last week from the upcoming Broadway musical Wonderland, which will open in the Marquis Theatre April 17, 2011. Kate Shindle was Miss Illinois in 1997 and Miss America in 1998, and has since appeared on Broadway in Caberet and Legally Blonde.

“One of my first questions to the creative team was, ‘Why is the Mad Hatter female?’” admits Shindle about her gender-bending new role.

“It’s a cool gimmick, but it has to make sense.” And it does: This update, featuring music by veteran Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlett Pimpernel), features a grown-up Alice who, dissatisfied with her marriage and career, takes an elevator into the bowels of Manhattan to find her missing daughter and, consequently, herself. “There are a lot of messages here,” says Shindle, who is introduced during the famous tea party sequence (pictured, top). “One is that there are forces at work within everybody and the question is what we want to let win. The Mad Hatter represents a part of Alice — I hesitate to say her dark side because she’s the fun, life-of-the-party side, but she’s also her insecurity, self-sabotage, and fear. The tea party is where Alice is introduced to the Hatter and realizes she has to reckon with that force.” What about the red pantsuit and bustle? “That’s the final showdown. It’s at a point in the show where the story might as well be over, but bad stuff, you know, just doesn’t go away quite so easily. That song is the beginning of it.”

-from Aubry D’Arminio at PopWatch

Previous posts about Wildhorn’s Wonderland since it’s been touring the counties here and here.

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