Friday 31 July 2020 at 7pm BST, broadcast free online as part of the Royal Opera House's #OurHouseToYourHouse series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6nvPOWTu5U
I originally saw this show in January 2017. It is amazing. Here is a review I wrote at the time:
On Monday night I was lucky enough to see Zoonation’s latest show, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, at the Roundhouse in Camden. The friends I was with are both long-term Zoonation afficionados, but it was the first time I had see one of their shows. I knew that they were a dance company that creates full-length pieces of theatre that add a hip-hop twist to famous films, plays and stories – most famously Into the Hoods and Some like it Hip Hop. However, I didn’t really know much about the concept behind the show in advance, and didn’t really know what to expect. What I got was an amazing, amazingly creative, inspiring and inspired show.
The show opens with the arrival of Ernest Andersson – a newly qualified therapist with a PhD in Normalization – at the Institution for Extremely Normal Behaviour. Its inmates include characters familiar from Alice in Wonderland – the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, Alice, Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit and the Dormouse – all of whom have been incarcerated due to the pathologisation of their individual obsessions. Each of the characters presents his or her obsession through dance as Ernest firstly tries and fails to cure each of them, and then eventually fails to see the need to do so.
Aside from the energy, imagination, and gravity-defying feats of the dancers, this introduction to the traits of each character is incredibly moving and thought-provoking in its exploration of mental health, psychological disorders and definitions of so-called normality. In her programme notes, director Kate Prince says that during her research she was inspired by the way in which Lewis Carroll describes his characters. She found his choice of language rather inflammatory, and not language that would be acceptable in discussions about mental health in today’s society. Eventually, her research and reflection on issues relating to mental health and the pressure to be ‘normal’ led to her decision to place her characters into a therapeutic situation and to consider how a therapist might analyse them today. As a choreographer working in the field of Hip Hop – within which open discussion of mental health largely remains taboo – Prince was keen to address the stigma around mental health issues, in the hope of encouraging people to seek help and treatment in moments of need. She has worked closely with the charity Time to Change, which aims to end the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems. Their work – including the annual Time to Talk day, which encourages people to take just 5 minutes to talk about mental health – along with the work of other charities such as Rethink Mental Illness and campaigns such as Heads Together, are helping to raise awareness of mental health problems, and to make it easier for those who are struggling to be able to ask for the help that they need.
During the interval, I and my friends happened to talk to the director, who has been chatting to members of the audience at each performance to gauge reactions to the show, and to check that the details of the plot are clear to them. It was really fascinating to talk to her, and also to have the rare opportunity to share our enthusiasm for the show directly with the creative force behind it. Prior to our discussion with Kate, we had been chatting about the representation of mental health issues in the first half. I found the depiction of the White Rabbit’s preoccupation with time, being on time, and routines – which seemed to suggest something akin to OCD – incredibly moving. Communicated through a repeated dance routine and repeated gestures, with very few words, it effectively represented the distressing loop in which the White Rabbit is stuck. Perhaps due to the very nature of dance as a medium, it nonetheless left the character’s symptoms and suffering open to the audience’s interpretation. Discussing the first half with Kate Prince, she confirmed that she had not wanted explicitly to identify the particular conditions by which each of the characters is affected, but to leave things open for the audience. I think the power of dance in the representation of mental health issues lies precisely in this space for a personal interpretation and response, which engages the individual with the characters on stage.
In the second half of the show, the characters have escaped from the Institution for Extremely Normal Behaviour, and return to Wonderland, where the characters are free to be themselves, and where their individual characteristics and differences are celebrated, rather than suppressed. The second half is a gloriously colourful, riotous and often hilarious celebration of difference, dance and individuality, and features a star turn from the Dormouse, star of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘Strictly’, according to the programme.
I would urge anyone who…. no, everyone to go and see this show. It is thought-provoking and life-affirming.
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