The Wednesday Play: Alice in Wonderland (1966)
Absolutely delighted to have got round to blogging about the version of Alice done for The Wednesday Play in 1966 by Jonathan Miller. It starred amongst others John Gielgud, Peter Cook, Leo McKern, Peter Sellers, Finlay Currie, Michael Redgrave, Wilfrid Brambell, Peter Eyre and Malcolm Muggeridge as the gryphon. The music was by Ravi Shankar (love his music but prefer the rather wilder stuff by his nephew Ananda, if you haven't come across him).
You read that right, MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, anti communist, critic of the sexual revolution and populariser of Mother Theresa. I might as well just pack up and give this one up because blogging about this one is punching well above my weight. Especially when put up against Jonathan Miller. This is no lightweight play for children, these are seriously big guns involved in this romp through Wonderland.
It was broadcast in December 1966 after 9pm (ie for adults rather than children) and the controversy was loud and immediate. Miller's version of Alice has been denounced as all sort of things (the word travesty keeps appearing, for example) and the arguing about what's actually going on has continued in the succeeding sixty years. This gorgeous piece of excellent television is more hated and subject to denunciation than probably anything I've blogged about.
There are only two keys we need to understand this version of Alice. The first is that (as indicated by the broadcast time) it is not intended for children, but is instead *about* children and childhood, and is for adults. The second is that Miller has made the decision to strip the story of any magic or fantasy, and has instead made it about dreaming and depicted a normal child surrounded by adults who don't particularly have time for her and do strange nonsensical things. There is also a layer of criticism of Victorian society but that is of a part with the kind of adults who feature in this play.
Miller was very clear that this was the intention, which is why everyone has spent the succeeding decades attempting to interpret it in pretty much every other way possible. I kept reading about Freud when reading up for this post, and there is simply no Freud here at all. There is no psychoanlysis, there's merely a girl and a bunch of adults.
Another thing which is wildly treated as is Miller is beheading rabbits on camera instead of merely making a production decision, is that the entire cast are dressed in normal Victorian clothes and the ones who are animals are not in animal costume. A real cat is used for the Cheshire cat. He gave his reason for this that if you've got great actors there's absolutely no point obscuring their faces - but it also stresses the realism by reinforcing that this interpretation is about an ordinary girl surrounded by ordinary adults.
Further levels of magic are taken out by an absence of extraordinary effects, although it is very clearly given a dreamy quality. I love this version: I actually like it best of the versions of Alice I've seen, and I think it's the unpretentious quality of the production which gives it this charm.
Anne-Marie Mallik, the child actress who played Alice, is another bone of contention. A lot of people think she comes across too flat and matter of fact, but of course that is the reason Miller chose her. Interestingly this is her only credit as an actress, she went into banking after leaving school.
The play is filmed mainly on location in a former military hospital and with wonderful country scenes. The fact that it is black and white makes it absolutely perfect, in my opinion. Ravi Shankar's score gives it a heady sixties ambience, suggesting that we're going to go off on the hippy trail to Afghanistan. But there I go, allowing myself to see things that aren't there instead of the unvarnished, flat story of a girl.
I think probably the reason this version of Alice has been so controversial is actually this rather dead-pan quality about it. If you are not actively filling people's attention with stuff, they tend to project things, and that is why so much of the criticism either misses the stated point of this production completely or sees things going on in it which weren't intended at all. The public just can't cope with an Alice where the cat is a cat and Alice is a girl.
And this is I think my own criticism of this play: it's too intelligent. Miller, like a lot of intelligent people, may have had difficulty realising that hoi polloi wouldn't be able to cope with an approach which made perfect sense to him, or even understand it. Although I love the production, I personally disagree with his interpretation of the story here, and while it's hugely successful there are some problems with the approach. An example would be the bit where Alice refers to the baby turning into a pig. The more fantastic elements of the story like this one contradict the premise that the story is about childhood and about Alice and the adults. If a real girl actually says that a baby has turned into a pig, you have to start explaining why. For it to be a dream would certainly fit within the interpretation of this version, but the problem is that there is too much stuff that has to be explained like this, you simply can't approach Alice in Wonderland as a straightforward story without accounting for the unreal things. On the other hand if you take out all the stranger things in Alice in Wonderland basically she falls asleep and wakes up again, so it's difficult to reconcile here. However I don't want you to think that I am suggesting that this problem with the approach is in any way a terminal criticism, it just requires the viewer not to scratch it too deeply. It's almost as if this one is best understood by not trying to understand it too much, and that is what I love best about it.
I have one other criticism which is more substantial, in my opinion. Apart from Shankar's music there are places where the soundtrack is a hymn tune. This is the only thing about this version which I think is completely wrong, because it seems to introduce the subject of religion into a story where it's out of place. It would have been better to use music fitting the theme of criticising Victorian society, and probably I think something suitable could have been found in Gilbert and Sullivan. Or more Ravi Shankar. Come on, while he's got the sitar out you might as well get more of him.
Highly recommended, but then you knew I was going to say that, didn't you.
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