Alice

Gesher Theatre's Alice (http://www.gesher-theatre.co.il/en/PRODUCTIONS/SHOWS/ALICE) is a thought-provoking take on Lewis Carroll and on Alice Liddell ("inspired by the writings of Lewis Carroll; Play by Roee Chen; Directed by Yehezkel Lazarov"). A few months ago I read a biography of Charles Dodgson which included long sections about Alice Liddell, and this affected my reaction to the play in ways Chen and Lazarov probably did not expect. In their play Alice is told that Carroll wrote about his own creation, but judging from Lazarov's talk after the presentation, this play is about the real Alice as well. Yet the real Alice Liddell had three children while the Alice in this play laments with her husband that they have none. Alice Liddell lived an active life, uncrippled by any trauma she may have received from Dodgson photographing her nude. In the play, she is seriousy injured. The grief Alice Liddell must have felt at the loss of two of her three sons in WW I -- unconnected as this was with Carroll -- has no part in the life of Chen and Lazarov's Alice. But perhaps the play is about how we would see Carroll's creation if she had grown up. The play has the fictional Alice raped, pulled from a modern view of the nude photography, but from what, either in the books or in Alice Liddell's life, might we get the idea that Alice would take drugs?

I would have liked it differently if I had known less.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox