Isla Campbell on taking a genuinely curious child to a genuinely strange story and surviving the aftermath of questions
I took my goddaughter, who is five and has recently developed the unshakeable habit of asking “but why” about literally everything, to see Alice in Wonderland at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, and I want to say up front that this was a genuinely bold choice of story for a child who demands logical explanations for absolutely everything.
The Production Itself
Colourful, loud in exactly the right way, with a Mad Hatter who properly committed to the chaos of the character rather than playing it safe, and a White Rabbit whose constant time anxiety got a genuine laugh out of most of the adults in the audience, myself very much included among them.
The Questions Started Almost Immediately
Within about ten minutes she’d asked why the rabbit was worried about time, why Alice followed a strange animal down a hole without telling anyone where she was going, and whether growing enormous after eating a cake was actually something that could happen to real people in real life. I answered honestly that no, it could not, and she looked deeply unconvinced by my confidence on the matter.
Her Favourite Character, Somewhat Alarmingly
The Queen of Hearts, specifically the shouting bits, which she then reenacted at full volume in the theatre lobby afterwards to the mild alarm of everyone nearby including me, her supposedly responsible guardian for the entire afternoon’s outing.
The Journey Home
An absolute barrage of follow-up questions about rabbits, holes, cakes, and whether the Queen of Hearts was a real historical queen, none of which I had satisfying answers for, all of which I attempted to answer anyway with varying degrees of honesty and creative improvisation on the spot.
Whether I’d Take Her Again
Immediately, though I might brief myself beforehand with a slightly more thorough understanding of Wonderland logic, because five-year-olds apparently demand a level of narrative consistency that Lewis Carroll himself never felt remotely obligated to provide his readers, and I was woefully unprepared for the cross-examination.