Alice at the Palace

Elizabeth Swados's innovative musical adaptation transforms Lewis Carroll's beloved tales into a darkly surreal concert-drama experience. Alice tumbles through Wonderland and the Looking-Glass in a dreamlike collage of song, dance, mime, and absurdist comedy. She encounters the White Rabbit's frantic urgency, the Caterpillar's cryptic wisdom, and the chaos of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, where logic dissolves entirely. The tyrannical Queen of Hearts threatens beheading over a nonsensical croquet game, while the Looking-Glass world introduces Tweedledee and Tweedledum's circular arguments, Humpty Dumpty's linguistic games, and the terrifying Jabberwocky. Throughout her journey, Alice grapples with shifting identities and size transformations, constantly questioned about her own reality by the eccentric inhabitants around her. The musical explores the thin boundary between sanity and madness, dream and waking life, ultimately suggesting that wonder and absurdity permeate both imagined and real worlds alike.