Review: ZooNation, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party ★★★★★

In The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Kate Prince’s ZooNation brings its typically riotous approach to Alice in Wonderland, which is to say, it grabs hold of its main characters to construct its own boisterous tale, anchored by some of the best break dancing around.

Elijah Smith in The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation © 2024 Foteini Christofilopoulou

It opens in Ladrington Brook, the Institution for Extremely Normal Behaviour, the denizens of which, watched over by a trio of sinister doctors, are anything but ‘normal’: The Mad Hatter (Issac Baptiste AKA Turbo) is suffering from mercury poisoning, The White Rabbit (Jaih Betote) lives in a state or permanent anxiety because he’s always late, twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Harrison Dowzell and Lindon Barr), constantly fight over a rattle, The Queen of Hearts, performed by Jade Hackett in the role originally created by the late Teneisha Bonner, to whom these performances are dedicated, is a rage-filled bully, and, of course, there's Alice (Natasha Gooden), who’s lost and confused.

Natasha Gooden in The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation ©2024 Foteini Christofilopoulou

Newly arrived doctor Ernst, an earnest expert in ‘normalisation’ (Tommy Franzen), is tasked with fixing this bunch of misfits by turning Tea Time into Therapy Time.No prizes for guessing he won’t succeed…

Act I serves to introduce the characters, with their back stories ably narrated by Betty, an engaging Malinda Parris.

Malinda Parris in The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation ©2024 Foteini Christofilopoulou

At an overlong 75 minutes, though, the first Act occasionally dips, with dancing sequences that somehow feel strangely unsatisfactory fleshing out the characters. So, Tweedledee and Tweedledum in fat suits engage in comic breakin’ combat; The Queen of Hearts’s dance echoes a miserable childhood of hurt and abuse; and the Cheshire Cat (Andry Oporia), explodes late onto the stage, alternating between manic grinning and threatening gangsterism.

Music, an eclectic soundtrack that combines reggae, rap, rhythm and blues, dub and a lot more besides created by D J Walde and Josh Cohen, with Kate Prince adding witty lyrics, comes from a couple of mixing desks and three vocalists placed on a high platform upstage.

Act II, though, is much tighter, a riotous delight set in Wonderland, the characters’ own ‘magical and safe’ place.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation - The Kate Prince Company ©2024 Foteini Christofilopoulou

Now, Ben Stones’s detailed sets move from the forbidding Institution to a tea party in a garden framed by topiary and topped by strings of fairy lights and multi-coloured spotlights (lighting design Natasha Chivers).

The characters gather around a massive table, topped by outsize tea crockery, including the teapot wherein sleeps the Dormouse (a charming puppet operated by Andry Oporia). And now, their stories told, all they have to do is dance - and boy, do they dance!

Each character shows his or her prowess; and although all are immensely skilled, special mention must go to the multitalented Tommy Franzen, whose spirited, ever more manic, ever more intricate feats of breakin’ have the audience shrieking with delight.

The Mad Hatter Tea Party offers glorious entertainment to the whole family, with its earnest message - ‘there’s no such thing as normal’ - framed by colour, thrills and unalloyed fun.

Not entirely coincidentally, The Royal Ballet kicks off its 2024/25 season with its own rather more traditional but no less inventive ballet Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, on the the ROH main stage. Compare and contrast, anybody?