LZHS ‘Wonderland’ performance focuses on fun
BY J.T. MORAND jtmorand@pioneerlocal.com January 31, 2012 1:14PM
The March Hare (Brain Suchy), the Dormouse (Kelly Devine), and the Mad Hatter (Nick Rossiter) explain their tea party to Alice (Marlisa Barrett) during dress rehearsal for Lake Zurich High School Drama Club's presentation of "Alice in Wonderland." | Miche
‘Alice in
Wonderland’
Lake Zurich High School, 300 Church St., Lake Zurich
7 p.m. Feb. 4, and 2 p.m. Feb. 4 and 5
The 2 p.m. show on Feb. 4 will include a Q&A with cast, a meet and greet with characters, a raffle and a performance by children’s rock band Poochamungas at no extra charge.
$8 - $10
www.lz95.net/PAC
Credits
For a list of the cast and crew members, see Page 8.
Article Extras
Updated: March 3, 2012 8:16AM
Shannon Flaherty can’t wait to bark orders and scream at people this weekend.
It will be fun because it’s rather out of character for her.
The Lake Zurich High School junior is playing the tyrannical Queen of Hearts in Marc Robin’s musical version of “Alice in Wonderland” with the high school drama club on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Lake Zurich High School Performing Arts Center.
The musical is as much fun for the actors to perform as it is expected to be for audiences to watch and participate in.
“I really, really wanted it,” Flaherty said about her role. “I just thought it would be such a fun part and it’s kind of entertaining to get to yell at people.”
She swears she’s nothing like the Queen offstage.
“I hope I’m not that mean in real life,” she said. “She’s kind of ridiculous and absurd.”
Freshman Marlisa Barrett was cast as Alice, the little girl who encounters all sorts of strange characters, including the nervous White Rabbit, the rude and jittery Mad Hatter and devilish Cheshire Cat, when she ends up in Wonderland after falling down a rabbit hole.
Barrett, who shares some characteristics with Alice but who is also quite different, enjoys seeing how Alice reacts in a completely different reality.
“It’s so different from how we live,” she said.
In some ways, playing Alice is easy. Both Barrett and Alice are strong-willed, Barrett said.
In other ways, it’s challenging because Alice is a little girl, only about 7 years old.
But, it’s always fun.
“I love being Alice,” she said, “because it’s very interesting to see how she reacts to the different people and different characters she meets, and the diversity of all those different characters is very cool.”
Director Marcel Graham, who is familiar with Robin’s musical version of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel because he worked on the original sound design for the production at Drury Lane Theatre in Evergreen Park in the late 1990s, said the actors have the ability to move as they want and react the way they think their characters would react.
This, he said, makes the characters more authentic; and they better be believable when you’re performing for an audience that will be made up mostly of children, he added.
“When their character makes the choice, that makes it so much more believable,” Graham said. “In my mind, if they’re not believable, especially with kids that are 4, 5, 6 years old, the kids tend to see right through that and they tend not to believe that this character is actually Alice or the Cheshire Cat. Unfortunately, once you lose them, it’s very difficult to get them back.”
Graham also credits the students who designed and built the set themselves with only minor adult supervision. They listened to Graham’s ideas, but used their own imaginations to develop a set that moves the action along seamlessly.
For example, Graham said they solved the challenge of the rabbit hole and how Alice is to fall down it by constructing a large tree stump, which Alice enters near the top. What the audience doesn’t see is the slide down which the actors move.
Robin’s version, Graham added, is also short enough for children to enjoy.
“Marc just gets kids,” he said. “There’s a lot of audience interaction with this show. At one point during the trial of the Knave, we bring four kids up on the stage and they act as the jury for the trial and they get to decide whether the Knave is guilty or innocent. It’s very audience-interactive and just a lot of fun for the audience.”
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