Metro Choice: Alice in Underland

'Anyone who's anyone has had a crack at Alice in Wonderland. Disney's White Rabbit scampered about singing 'I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date' in the cute cartoon. Then along came Jonathan Miller with a dark and disturbing TV version. Dennis Potter, in his 1985 film, Dreamchild, cast Coral Browne as an 80-year-old Alice remembering her relationship with the Rev Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. Christopher Hampton is the latest to throw his hat into the ring with Alice's Adventures Under Ground which begins previewing at the Cottesloe Theatre from Tuesday (with Sasha Hanua right). Armed with the warning that the production is 'not recommended to children under twelve', this is no safe and comfy retelling of the tale.

'Still she haunts me phantomwise/Alice moving under skies' wrote Carroll in a poem at the end of Alice Through the Looking Glass. In Hampton's play Carroll's fascination for a ten-year-old girl is, at best, equivocal.

Clearly, not the stuff of tender fireside tales.

Box Office: 071-928 2252 (Photograph omitted)