ANU Musical Theatre Collective | Review by Grace Cassidy
A Surrealist, Psychedelic Exploration of Grief
26 May 2025
It’s remarkable how a few set pieces can spark the human imagination. Throw up a brick wall and a sign that says ‘Underground’, crank the volume on some 1940s jazz, and the audience immediately knows where they are – the London Underground during the second World War. Dim the lights and blast an air raid siren, and they’ll quickly grasp that this isn’t just WWII. This is the London Blitz.
Last week, the ANU Musical Theatre Collective put on their first show of the year: Alice by Heart, directed by Olivia Martin, at Canberra Theatre Centre’s Courtyard Studio. Created by Steve Sater and Duncan Sheik of Spring Awakening fame, and co-written by Jessie Nelson (Waitress), Alice by Heart is a musical inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It follows Alice Spencer (Siye Whitbread), a teenage girl taking refuge in the London Underground with her ailing best friend Alfred (Alex Matthews) during the Blitz. Trapped in a world that’s tearing itself apart and surrounded by strangers who are also taking refuge from the bombs, Alice is forced to contend with a horrible truth – Alfred is dying from tuberculosis.
Terrified of losing her best friend, Alice sneaks into quarantine and begs Alfred to escape reality with her, by diving into their favourite novel, Alice in Wonderland. This plan starts to go awry immediately, when a Red Cross Nurse (Sophie Parnham), furious to discover Alice has breached quarantine, rips the book from her hands and destroys it. Alice is devastated but determined to continue, insisting that she knows the story “by heart”.
As Alice attempts to reconstruct Lewis Carroll’s iconic story, the terrifying reality of what’s actually happening around her keeps bleeding through. The fabulously wicked Queen of Hearts is the nurse who destroyed Alice’s book; her soldiers carry gas masks. The Mad Hatter (Tali Blackman) is a British soldier with PTSD and the bowls at his tea party are combat helmets. Alfred doubles as the white rabbit, constantly rushing off and checking his pocket watch (“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”). Both the rabbit and Alfred are slipping through Alice’s fingers, poignantly capturing the feeling that she’s running out of time. Alice’s reality fractures, the narrative twists itself into new shapes, and our protagonist finds herself caught in the pages of a story that isn’t quite what we remember.
This production is stacked with outstanding performances. Whitbread’s voice is angelic and her turn as Alice Spencer is imbued with both fragility and strength. James Phillips is brilliant and utterly unhinged as the Duchess. Wearing a hoop skirt and mop as a hair piece, he wobbles onto stage and screeches that Alice is a “Pig!”, promptly sending the audience into fits of laughter. Oliver Walsh switches deftly between the languid, other-worldly Caterpillar and a grounded, caustic Angus, another of the bomb shelter’s occupants. Throughout, the band (stunningly directed by Phoebe Mu) plays music that is at times beautiful and others discordant, creating an atmosphere that perfectly reflects the bittersweet nature of the story. There are unfortunately a few moments where the band drowns out the voices of the cast — possibly a result of issues with the sound system — but both band and cast were able to keep calm and carry on despite technical difficulties.
Olivia Martin’s Alice by Heart is a moving exploration of grief and escapism. The preposterous setting of Wonderland collides dizzyingly with the horrors of the London Blitz until it’s difficult to discern where one ends and the other begins. The production creates a psychedelic, surreal experience, and against all odds, succeeds in balancing this chaos with the melancholic story of a teenage girl who just wants the world to stop for a moment so she can have more time with her best friend.
Grace Cassidy is a writer and aspiring actress. Over the past two years, she has fallen in love with Canberra’s theatre scene by participating in theatre workshops, acting in local short films and getting involved in the Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Artist programs. Grace is passionate about storytelling and has a soft spot for theatre that explores complex family relationships, ride or die friendships, and themes of hope.
