Lewis Carroll and Festival Theatre

topsy-turvy world: Until Oct. 16 at the Festival Theatre, 10 Queen Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake. shawfest.com or 1-800-511-7429The story of the little girl who tumbles down the rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy world will never, it seems, go out of style — Lewis Carroll original tale is the second most published book in history after the Bible — but Alice is also having a theatrical moment, according to Toronto Star. In the past four years the national theatres of both Ireland and the U.K. have produced major adaptations: Alice in Funderland at Dublin Abbey was a clubland musical satirizing the corruption that ran the Irish state into bankruptcy; while wonder.land at London National Theatre interpreted Wonderland as online culture, the space we enter when we fall into our mobile phones and computer screens and can't seem to find our way out . Article Continued Below Now the Shaw Festival — one of Canada de facto national stages, thanks to its large budgets, expansive repertoire and capacity to employ artists on season-long contracts — has taken on this iconic story in one of this season blockbuster shows. By Karen Fricker Theatre Critic Mon., May 16, 2016 Alice in Wonderland Adapted by Peter Hinton from the book by Lewis Carroll and directed by Hinton, with music by Allen Cole. This Alice, three years in development, is the brainchild of director/adapter Peter Hinton, an enticing prospect given Hinton extraordinary capacity to create complex, multi-layered stagings that excavate the meanings of his chosen scripts, as with his recent Shaw productions of Pygmalion, Cabaret and Lady Windermere Fan, and his queer take on Anosh Irani Bombay Black at Factory this season. Certainly, the visual world that he and his many collaborators have created on the Festival stage is sumptuous: the great pleasure of this production is watching image after amazing stage image unfold. Hinton has said in interview that he interested in challenging perceptions of the Victorian era — when Carroll, and indeed Shaw, wrote — as restrained and wants to rather celebrate it as a time of vivid imagination. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.