The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Roundhouse, London, review: The show’s sweetness and energy are irresistible
Zoonation's hip hop 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party' with characters inspired by ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is complete with Ben Stones’ set designs of oversized teapots and fairy lights
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Your support makes all the difference.In The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, ZooNation use Lewis Carroll’s Alice books as a springboard for joyful hip hop dance. Famous characters, from the Hatter to the Queen of Hearts, are analysed through a therapy framing device. It’s when they’re given room to dance that the show takes off.
ZooNation, the hip hop dance company founded by choreographer Kate Prince, specialise in twists on established stories, making their name with Into the Hoods, with its distinctive blend of strong characterisation, warmth and vivid dance. This Mad Hatter, first created for the Royal Opera House’s studio theatre in 2014, has been revised for the much larger Roundhouse. It’s danced on a thrust stage, with action spilling out into the auditorium.
Tommy Franzen plays Ernest, a newly qualified doctor who arrives at the Insitution for Extremely Normal Behaviour, only to be overwhelmed by his patients, all inspired by characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
This gives each character their moment in the spotlight. Prince and her team take the idea of madness seriously, digging for vulnerabilities. It’s always good-hearted and thoughtful, but this device makes for a stop-start first half. There’s also some tension with the source material – Carroll’s Alice, whatever her troubles, is not fragile.
The message can be earnest, but the show’s sweetness and energy are irresistible. When the characters escape into the Wonderland tea party, it’s a delight. Ben Stones’ designs whisk us from the Gothic institution to a world of clipped hedges, oversized teapots and fairy lights. Ernest is guided through a floating sleepwalking dance, waking up to marvels.
Prince blends big group numbers with explosive solos. The whole company is strong, with dazzling turns by some of its best regular performers. Franzen is kept under wraps a little too long, but both his drifting sleep dance and his athletic triumph are impressive.
As the Hatter, Isaac “Turbo” Baptiste is sinuous and commanding, in speech and in dance. He wears his eccentric clothes with dandyish relish, casual but entirely sharp. Movement shivers through his long limbs, from bendy lines to electric bursts of speed.
Teneisha Bonner is a glorious Queen of Hearts, imperious and unpredictable. She’s a dancer of gleaming strength, both in her elegant, queenly gestures and her pulsing hip hop moves. This was a strong vocal performance, too – she simply screams in rage whenever she decides the focus on other people’s problems is getting boring. Josh Cohen and DJ Walde lead the band in their own exuberant score.
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