This week we chat with ourselves about which of life's truths can be gleaned from one of Wildhorn’s biggest flops - Wonderland!
John Fleming of the St. Petersburg Times expressed mixed feelings about the production. He called it "a visual feast, with dazzling costumes, marvelously funky dance and a flashy, high-tech production design," thought it "is loaded with talent onstage," and said the score "boasts one insanely catchy pop song after another." He continued, "But Wonderland also has a problem: It makes almost no sense. The book needs a major rewrite, and not just a tweak here and there. What Wildhorn and his colleagues...or somebody else can do to bring at least a measure of dramatic logic to the musical will ultimately decide its fate." He felt a scene in which Alice meets author Lewis Carroll "appears to be an attempt to give the show emotional depth", but "it is totally out of place, like dropping a scene from one of Wildhorn's Gothic pop operas into Legally Blonde," and the character of the Mad Hatter was a "casualty of the misconceived book" because "the story is so preposterous." He noted "El Gato and the jazzy Caterpillar ... have great solos to introduce Alice to Wonderland, but then have little to do the rest of the show."
- FURTHER READING -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderland_(musical)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wildhorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland
https://music.apple.com/us/album/wonderland-original-broadway-cast-recording/433522098
https://open.spotify.com/album/4LSb6xpCHXLeLJeNtCrlBc
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Our theme song and interstitial music all by the one and only Benedict Braxton Smith. Find out more about him at www.benedictbraxtonsmith.com
