Alice in Wonderland
ALICE SOLO
Tune: ‘Memory’
Lonely.
I’m so lost and so lonely
In this wood where there’s only
Silent shadows and me.
All the trees hide the warmth and comfort that I once knew,
Help me someone, set me free.
All day long I’ve sought a friend
To shield me with a smile.
Leaves are swirling, and the wind’s loud whirling
Seems to tell me I’m a stranger.
Find me.
Someone please come and find me.
There are ghosts all around me
And the darkness draws near.
In the forest the creatures stirring deep underground
Soon as nightmares shall appear.
Hurry Daddy, I am here.
SEXTET
Alice, Tick & Tock, Mock Turtle, White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat
Tune: ‘The King’s New Clothes’
ALICE: Give me your hands.
T & T: We’ve both got paws!
MOCK T: I’ve got some fins.
WHITE R: Four feet.
CHESHIRE: And claws.
ALICE: The point is that we’re all together.
ALL: Yes, all together.
ALICE: And all together.
ALL: We’ll all together defeat the Jabberwock and all his crew.
MOCK T: We’ll fight on mud.
WHITE R: We’ll fight on briar.
CHESHIRE: Beside the fire.
T & T: We won’t retire.
ALL: Till we’ve conspired to take those villains down a peg or two.
ALICE: If they try and beat us –
WHITE R: Or otherwise defeat us –
ALL: They’ll very soon find we all work in perfect harmony.
ALL: The six of us are friends and neighbours,
We’ll lend our labours and end, bejabers,
Such friendly neighbours we’ll hold the rest of Wonderland in thrall.
T & T: Our hearts are light as fairy bubbles.
WHITE R: We’ll share our troubles.
MOCK T: Our very doubles.
ALL: No merry pub’ll seem half as warm as the love among us all.
ALL: Who can come between us?
Was anything less heinous?
CHESHIRE: Than the sight of Cheshire Cat –
MOCK T: Mock Turtle.
TICK: Tick.
TOCK: Tock.
WHITE R: And White Rat – er, Rabbit.
ALL: Our cosy band won’t be downhearted,
We won’t be parted, won’t be outsmarted,
And now we’ve started to work together for the common good.
WHITE R: I’ll never more get in a paddy!
MOCK T: I’ll smash a baddie!
ALICE: I’ll find my daddy!
T & T: We’ll go quite mad!
CHESHIRE: And I’ll just keep grinning like all good cats should.
ALL: In short our fine committee
Will soon be sitting pretty –
We might even find a way out of this wood!
FINALE
Practically everybody
Tune: ‘Camelot’
ALL: The day has faded with its thrills and laughter,
But soon the joys of Christmas are at hand,
And we shall all live happ’ly every after
In Wonderland.
CHESHIRE: My future life from crime has been diverted.
MOCK T: Though if you need a brief I’ll gladly stand.
FAIRY: And as for me I’m thoroughly converted.
ALL: That’s Wonderland!
ALL: Wonderland. Wonderland.
DUCHESS: I’ll be content with my dear Duke.
ALL: Good old Wonderland! Wonderland!
DUKE: She makes me want to –
DUCHESS: Denis!
DUKE: Sorry, dear.
WHITE R: I’ll help our local Fairy with her new spells,
While for my watch I’ll buy a second hand.
C’S: And we’ll go on forever sniffing bluebells.
ALL: In Wonderland.
ALL: Wonderland! Wonderland!
TOCK: I love you, Tick.
TICK: I love you, Tock.
ALL: But in Wonderland, Wonderland,
There’s still the Jabberwock!
JABBER: Good Fairy, you have tamed me with your sweetness,
I’ve given my last terrible command.
FAIRY: So here begins the fun for each and every one
Who’s old enough to say that –
ALL: I believe in Wonderland!
PS
Arts Centre Theatre in Bristol did a show in the early ’80s based on Alice in Wonderland. They used to do a lot of kids-orientated things in those days before their ethos evolved and moved more towards the Alan Ayckbourns and Michael Frayns of the repertoire where I for one felt a lot more comfortable. Meanwhile, there were lyrics to be written.
Compared to having to come up with your own melody, fitting words to an existing tune is a luxury. And when you have the entire musical songbook to plunder and no truck with the legal niceties, the opportunities are infinite.
I can’t remember much about the Alice show now but internal evidence indicates the kind of plot we must have shoehorned the blameless Reverend Dodgson’s characters into. I remember the Alice solo sounded particularly plangent mainly because of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s redolent tune. Can’t say I’m partial to much of his stuff, but there’s a reason some things become classics. (Having said that, I heard Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West for the first time recently, and at least one of his melody lines sounded suspiciously close to one of the main tunes in Phantom of the Opera. But I’m sure I must have been mistaken. If it were true, someone with a finer ear than mine would have called him out on it long before now, wouldn’t they? Envy, spite and the law being what they are, stands to reason.)
And speaking of plagiarism, I had known Frank Loessor’s songs from the Danny Kaye/Hans Christian Andersen film for years from kids’ radio programmes on Saturday mornings, before I became aware of Guys and Dolls, and had always enjoyed the jaunty insouciance of ‘The King’s New Clothes’. (Andersen’s original story featured an emperor not a king – an early lesson, perhaps, in smoothing any unnecessary bumps out of an idea before you start crafting your lyrics.) I am very gratified, looking at it with a fresh eye, having not even thought about it for several decades, to see that the characters’ attitudes were appropriate to their worlds: the Mock Turtle vows he will fight on mud, the White Rabbit on briar (or should that be “in briar”?), while the Cheshire Cat declares he will be quite happy “Beside the fire”. This also illustrates Stephen Sondheim’s theory that rhymes which are spelt differently are somehow more powerful than words which mostly share the same vowels and consonants. They’re certainly more satisfying to find when you’re writing. (I can no longer remember what kind of creatures Tick and Tock were supposed to be. Were they even in the book? No idea.) I do know I was a little wary of how the song would come across, split as it was between six different amateur performers, each with some tortuous half-lines which needed to be sung crisply and in strict rhythm. But I have no recollection of any major disasters, so I can only assume everyone must have risen splendidly to the occasion.
The rousing finale was stolen from my go-to favourite, Frederick Loewe’s Camelot. There’s a standard kind of broken rhyme – “She makes me want to –” “Denis!” “Sorry, dear” to ensure at least one laugh. (Denis as in Denis Thatcher, I assume. But he wasn’t in the book either.) I see one line in the Finale is given to some characters called ‘C’s’. These rang no bells with me at all, until eventually I dug out an old programme: C’s stands for Caterpillars, two of them. And apparently I played the Duke, Denis. I remember now. I invented one joke, saying in an aside that I’d like to send my wife off on a cruise. Play on words, d’you see, like Cruise Missile, Greenham Common being all the rage at the time. On the whole, if that was the standard of the wit on show, I’m glad I can’t remember much more about it than that.