Alice in Wonderland is a tale known to most: a girl sporting a blue frock and a white apron follows a rabbit down a hole that leads into the magical world known as Wonderland. But Kokandy Productions’ musical, Alice by Heart, takes the frequently used metaphor “down a rabbit hole” further, asking: What if Wonderland is the childlike world we escape to when things get tough?
Alice By Heart, set in the London Blitz of World War II, follows Alice Spencer (Caitlyn Cerza) as her life is turned upside down when she and her friend Alfred (Joe Giovannetti) are forced to take shelter in an underground tube station. When Alfred is diagnosed with a life-threatening case of pneumonia, Alice encourages him to escape into their favorite childhood book: Alice in Wonderland. Over the next hour and a half, the two teens embark on their own version of the fable, colored by their external experiences of sickness, war, and heartbreak. In Wonderland, far away from the somber train station, the friends become Alice and the White Rabbit, and everyone else in the shelter appears as characters like the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts.
The musical has Kokandy’s signature stamps on it. Before the show, a character, later revealed to be the Mad Hatter, scurries around the stage pulling planks from the stage platform. The performance space is also highly immersive, featuring in-the-round staging that centers the performers and has them running around the audience, too.
Making Alice by Heart immersive is what this production does best. When Alice and Alfred escape into Wonderland, the doors to the performance space close, shutting out the outside light. It’s a moment that signifies the two’s attempted shutting out of their world’s reality, but it’s also one that further immerses the audience both in the world that the two create and the mental and emotional turmoil that the war has had on the escapees in the shelter. Wonderland’s whimsy and peculiarity are also illustrated by colorful lights and playful choreography that bring the space and the world alive.
Despite its music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Steven Sater (both of Spring Awakening fame), Alice by Heart’s music is not particularly memorable. The songs blend into each other—not seamlessly, but inconspicuously. Instead, numbers are made memorable by the show’s talented performers. “Afternoon,” which takes place at a moment of particularly high emotion (the most I can say without spoilers), is carried by Joe Giovannetti’s tear-jerking rendition of the song. For a show that was only an hour and a half long, Alice by Heart elicited a good amount of tears that were heard and seen across the audience.
Suffice to say, Alice by Heart is a worthwhile show to catch if you’re looking for a good tear-jerker and a smaller production that puts on display all of the wonderful talent in theater Chicago has to offer. But, to no fault of this particular performance, this show simply isn’t one that I would take somebody to as their first introduction to Chicago theater.
Alice by Heart played at the Chopin Theatre through September 29, 2024.
