Lookingglass Alice

Five years after Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses took New York by storm, Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company returns to debut its second production in New York this week with its 2005 smash hit Lookingglass Alice at The New Victory Theater, New York's premier theater for kids and families, February 9th through 25th.
 
The New Victory Theater is actually the second stop on a major east coast tour of Lookingglass Alice, a stunning and surreal production that puts viewers in the middle of a topsy-turvy makeover of Lewis Carroll's timeless classics Alice in Wonderland and Through the Lookinggglass.  The current tour, presented in association with The Actor's Gymnasium, kicked off to rave reviews and a highly successful three-week run January 9th through 28th at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.    In addition to "blessing" the McCarter for importing Lookingglass Alice to Princeton, the Newark Star Ledger went on to say  "Now this is theater!.... breathtakingly staged and bravely executed...the audience was applauding more frequently than they do at a hit Broadway musical."

Following its engagement at The New Victory, Lookingglass Alice will travel next to Philadelphia's Arden Theatre, May 10th through June 10th, then return to Chicago for a summer run starting June 20th.

The current tour happily reunites Lookingglass Artistic Director David Catlin, adaptor and director of Lookingglass Alice, with his entire original 2005 cast. Lookingglass' unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole – performed in the round with on-stage seating -- unites the worlds of the famed Alice (Lauren Hirte) and author Lewis Carroll (Lawrence E. DiStasi) with a booming thunderclap and a flash of white light. Alice - that pugnacious explorer, demure deconstructionist, young woman unfazed by the Jabberwock - must make her way across an illuminated chessboard by outwitting the Red Queen (Tony Hernandez's two-story terror on stilts), out-chatting the Mad Hatter (Doug
Hara's overzealous audience-loving host) and out-maneuvering the bizarre, but friendly, Caterpillar (a charming stacked trio of actor-bats).  Whether she's floating high above a swelling sea of tears or deciphering the enigmatic advice of the chillin' Cheshire Cat (Anthony Fleming III), Alice's "curiouser and curiouser" encounters bring her one square closer to becoming a queen.

Lookingglass Alice incorporates the company's signature style of physical theater blended with circus arts to help conjure up Wonderland's mad merrymakers as they soar down from above, pop up from beneath and dash across the stage.  Helping with the onstage magic is the original Lookingglass Alice design team  - Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), Chris Binder (lights), Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi (choreography), Dan Ostling (scenic) and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman (sound design and composition), who have all returned help fill Lookingglass Alice with marvelous flights of fancy and a subtle whiff of wistfulness.

After its New York debut, Lookingglass Alice moves to Philadelphia's Arden Theatre Company, located in the heart of Old City at 40 North 2nd Street, May 10th through June 10th.  The Arden presented Lookingglass' Hard Times in 2003/2004, which received excellent critical and audience acclaim.  The Arden has been designated "The Best of Philly" by Philadelphia Magazine, "Theatre Company of the Year" by The Philadelphia Inquirer and has won 27 Barrymore awards from the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

Finally, back by popular demand, Lookingglass Alice returns to Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre to close its 2006/07 season with a summer run starting June 20th. Tickets are already on sale. Call the Lookingglass Box Office, (312) 337-0665, or visit http://www.lookingglasstheatre.org

Currently on stage at Lookingglass in Chicago is the Midwest debut of Glen Berger's hilarious new language play The Wooden Breeks, directed by Lookingglass Ensemble Member Heidi Stillman, through March 11th.  April brings the world premiere of Black Diamond:  The Year the Locusts Have Eaten, a timely and explosive new story of an African American journalist and a young female Liberian freedom fighter by Lookingglass Artistic Associate J Nicole Brooks, co-directed by Brooks and David Catlin.