Unsuk Chin Alice in Wonderland, Barbican Centre, London

Abstract

Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland is that rare thing: a wholly satisfying artistic event, its multiplicity of meanings resonating in the mind long after the ceaselessly inventive music itself comes to a stop. Most adaptations of such wide-ranging texts focus on one or two aspects of the original, and Chin and her librettist, the playwright David Henry Hwang, sacrifice much of Carroll's playfulness to darken and deepen his message. Their Wonderland retains his virtuosic whimsy, of necessity, but ultimately becomes a fierce, unforgiving, savagely dysfunctional place, as if sieved through Beckett's absurdist nihilism; the humour tiptoes along the edge of an abyss, glancing down nervously.