Cover Image: PLC students bring fresh creativity to the stage in their spirited take on Alice in Wonderland. Photo by Tiffany Gossage.

Alice in Wonderland
PLC Perth, 7-9 August 2025
Hazel Day Drama Centre

11-year-old Alice (Imogen Whyte) is arguing with her mum (Ava Farrer) in Brixton tube station, the southern terminus of London Underground’s Victoria Line. Partly because Alice is less than enchanted with Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which she has to study for school.

Suddenly Alice, not minding the gap between reality and fantasy, jumps into a carriage just as the train is departing. Her distraught mother is left stranded on the platform. 

But this is no ordinary train. Alice is trapped in Carroll’s nonsense world on a high-speed journey to nowhere… or is it?

The original Poltergeist Theatre and Brixton House production of Jack Bradfield’s play with lyrics by “rapperturg” Gerel Falconer premiered at London’s Brixton House on 1 December 2022. 

Fast forward to Perth in early August 2025 and we have a bunch of talented students from Presbyterian Ladies’ College gifting us their own ripper production as a belated Christmas in July treat.

This entirely student-led production was the outcome of PLC hosting a workshop by Future Anything, which as PLC Head of Dance and Drama Oliver Craze writes is “an organisation dedicated to helping young people turn their ideas into action.”

One could not have picked a better project to embody this notion in motion. As in Carroll’s original story, this Alice is negotiating the middle childhood transition. Rap, originally giving voice to the disenfranchised and marginalised, is her chosen vehicle of expression. But she lacks confidence and keeps the bars which could liberate rather than imprison her, private.

Also as in Carroll’s original story, the other characters here, though fantastical, have their own journeys of self-growth, their own story arcs, to navigate. 

Rabbit (Mimi Castleden) is emblematic of busywork, Tortoise (Samiya Kefford) needs to come out of his/her shell. Football goalies Dum and Dee (Arabella Bowles and Sophie Duncan) must learn the value of teamwork. Cat (Portia Pryor) must come out of the shadows. Tea Party participants Pigeon (Mya Weston) Chatter (Eloise Davey), Auretta Qaqish (Rat), Hester Bennett (Nose) are forever plotting and scheming but never actually putting their plans into action. 

The set, dominated by an excellent approximation of two carriages of a London Underground train (mad hats off to Maya D’Silva and Isabel Greentree), the movement of which is managed through deft video work through its windows, is the backdrop for what is initially a series of somewhat disjointed encounters in between Alice and these strange creatures, so economically attired by student costume designers including Samara Sudwell and Rachel Cheveralls.

But this fluid exposition is merely a dramatis personae played out in real time as Alice comes to grips with her predicament. Soon enough, all are united, under Alice’s inspiration, to depose the Queen of the Line (also played by Ava Farrer – appropriate, since the Queen represents parental authority) – and liberate her minions Ava Falconer Hammersmith (Ava Falconer), District (Isla Barker) and Circle (Chloe Speirs). 

Not to mention the feared Jabberwocky (Mia Brown). And maybe even the train itself, stuck on, the same track, an endless loop which must be broken…

Whyte, as an Alice literally learning to find her voice, delivers a powerhouse performance. The battle raps — with Chatter, her mum, and the Queen — are standout moments in a show already packed with highlights (and, it must be said, more than a few puns).

But really there are no weak links, and directors Matilda Allen, Miller Duffield, Isobel Barker, Greta Terzieva, Liv Bell and Mira Yew (Years 9-11) seem fully to have grasped the very real opportunity to express through this fun production profound truths so significant for to teenage students such as themselves.

The entire team, including the remainder of an army of cast and crew too numerous to mention here, are to be congratulated for so successfully delivering a project which clearly demonstrates what’s possible when young people’s agency and creativity are allowed to flourish under careful guidance and inspiration.