This year's Christmas show at The Helix in Dublin inspired our fashionable tea party. Photographs: Alan Betson. Stylist: Jan Brierton.
'Oh my ears and whiskers! How late it's getting!' Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy's adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice in Wonderland, is sure to stir up young audiences at The Helix this month, illustrating, as it so vigorously does, how perfectly absurd grown-ups can be. Just imagine, for starters, Barry McGovern as the slightly stoned caterpillar, or Barbara Brennan as the imperious Duchess. "Tut, tut, child! Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it," says she.
"The characters are so well-drawn," says Burke Kennedy, "so vicious, really. There is absolutely nothing saccharine about it. There is enough of a child still in me to want to depict adults in this way, to take my revenge! As a children's story, it's both scary and challenging." Her adaptation was first staged at the Focus Theatre in 1979, when Joan Bergin, who won an Emmy this year for her costumes in The Tudors, dressed actors for the first time. For this production, the elaborate costumes were designed by Sinead Cuthbutt, whose son Jayde is one of our models.
For the third year in a row - following Sleeping Beauty (2006) and The Secret Garden (2005) - Anne Clarke of Landmark Productions and Una Carmody, director of the Helix, have joined forces with this Christmas show, to provide "a proper piece of theatre", an alternative to the traditional panto. "This is not about glitter and funny songs and parodies," says Carmody, "but something else entirely. When we first heard the script we were surprised by how familiar it is. Kids are mesmerised by the rhymes and there's that tremendous sense of how unfair it is to be given out to as a child when you've done nothing wrong - not that Alice herself is the most well-behaved child . . ."
"Anyone whose idea of Alice in Wonderland is informed by Disney will be surprised by this production," adds Clarke. "There is a lot in it for adults as well as children."
So there's great scope for family outings in Dublin this season, including the Gaiety panto - Beauty and the Beast, Great Expectations at the Gate and Can You Catch a Mermaid at the Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire. Alice is directed by Michael Barker-Caven, straight from a successful run of Shadowlands in London's West End. Malcolm Adams appears and disappears as the March Hare, Michael James Ford is terminally late as the White Rabbit, the young Tadhg Murphy shows great comic timing as the Cheshire Cat and the Knave of Hearts, Clara Simpson shouts "Off with her head!" as the Queen. Alice is played by Ailish Symons.
Here, Ellen Higgins appears as Alice for this showcase of children's fashion, styled by Jan Brierton in the perfect setting of the formal gardens at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.