As Alice in Canning Town brings its East End reinvention of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Newham playground, Arc in the Park, get a flavour for the show with this new trailer. And book your tickets!
James Kenworth‘s new adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic runs as a site-specific production at the East London playground until 18 August 2019.
When Alice follows a rabbit one day, she finds herself in an unusual, magical world filled with extraordinary characters. But this Wonderland has been reconfigured for today’s East End. All the favourite characters are still there, but in new, modern guises. A cockney rabbit, a rave-mad Mad Hatter, a hookah-smoking ex-Bollywood actor, Tweedledee and Tweedledum as hipsters, and a would-be grime artist called MC Turtle.
From Cockney to Bangra, from the Krays to Stormzy, Alice in Canning Town is a celebration of not only one of the best loved fantasies of all time, but a kaleidoscopic and action-packed journey through an East End that survived Hitler’s blitz and reinvented itself as a leading light in multicultural Britain.
Written by Kenworth and directed by James Martin Charlton, Alice in Canning Town features children from local Newham primary and secondary schools performing alongside professional actors. Kenworth and Charlton previously worked together on a site specific adaptation of Animal Farm, renamed Revolution Farm, that was staged a Newham City Farm in 2014, and on A Splotch of Red: Keir Hardie in West Ham, which toured East London in 2016.
Watch the trailer