Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin (review)

Since the publication of the original novel of Lewis Carroll in 1865, the fairy tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been adapted into books, operas, ballets, movies, TV plays, etc. This operatic version, Alice in Wonderland, opens up a new perspective for audiences. The opera is the result of East-West cooperation with Korean composer Unsuk Chin, Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang, Japanese American conductor Kent Nagano, German stage director Achim Freyer, and costume designer Nina Weitzner.

The opera has a total of ten parts. As an introduction to the opera, Scene I displays a fairytale setting of illusively wonderful but inconceivable circumstance. Alice, a young girl acted by British soprano Sally Matthews, appears in an exaggerated mask in a dream world. While reading a book in the library she is thrown into a treasure chamber with several locked doors. Alice meets three strange figures all wearing masks: a boy carrying a mummified cat followed by two men identical to each other. Since all of them are wearing masks, apart from operatic singing, animated actions become crucial for the audience to interpret their thoughts and their feelings. Apart from pantomime-like body movements, the vocal part of the opera is also anti-traditional in scale and mode, although classical singing remains central to the opera. The operatic music, using colorful orchestration, dramatizes the character’s presence frequently but not always. Also, the opera attaches great importance to contemporary audio-visual effects. This is expressed in singing, orchestral accompaniment, each character’s costumes, and the staging, all of which transport the audience into an almost surrealistic wonderland. Scene I, meant to impress the audience with all of the musical and custom-and-mask descriptions, seems full of suggestions, meaning that these performing elements set the tone for what the entire opera looks like. The opera follows a Western opera pattern but is also a modern performance that combines both concepts.

Scenes II and III form the initial phase of Alice’s experience in the wonderland. Besides Alice, the White Rabbit (Scene II) and the swimming mouse encountered by Alice become central figures. Here, a subject through performance is to show imaginary changes of Alice’s size and to dramatize a pool of tears shed mythically by sad Alice. The constant changes in Alice’s size point to Alice’s ongoing identity crises, an aspect worth pondering. Just as Alice repeatedly wonders: “Who in the world am I?” “Tell me who I am! Tell me! Tell me!” these unanswered questions are dramatized further in Interlude I.

Throughout Interlude I, Alice’s body action and a huge blue Caterpillar depicted by the music lead to a vivid pantomime. The Caterpillar is acted by a group of four performers, including a noticeable instrumentalist playing bass clarinet. The Caterpillar sits on a large mushroom, and his masked head is copied from Alice’s image rather than Caterpillar’s own. An uncertainty is created by this dramatic design. On the one hand, the Caterpillar is like an adviser from whom Alice hears words of wisdom about the advantages of changing her sizes. On the other hand, he is also a phantom of Alice appearing with her illusory image, which seems to mirror the real Alice in front of him. In this scene, the two characters neither sing nor recite lines. Instead, the bass clarinet plays a solo piece when Caterpillar and Alice are on the stage. When the Caterpillar is motionless, the music that the Caterpillar enacts fills the stage to represent his advice. In contrast, Alice uses body language to “converse” with Caterpillar. The obvious contrast between the sizes of the two roles makes the characters distinct: Alice is small while Caterpillar is gigantic. The tremendous contrast presented by their different sizes in appearance creates a strong visual effect on the stage: the strength...