Review: ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is Joffrey Ballet’s wacky and wonderful season closer

Lauren Warnecke, Chicago Tribune

June 6, 2025

The Joffrey Ballet’s season rarely extends this far into summer, but it’s safe to say “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was worth the wait. This beast of a ballet by the Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon had its North American premiere at the Lyric Opera House on Thursday.

If, like for me, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 fairy tale about a girl who stumbles into Wonderland is a core memory, all those beloved characters are there, with a splendidly cogent (and at times delightfully grotesque) libretto. It’s more Tim Burton than Disney, but you’ll recognize moments no matter your preferred version (including my personal favorite, the 1985 TV movie musical starring Jayne Meadows and Carol Channing).

Following a drowse-inducing garden party at her Victorian Oxford estate, Alice (magnificently danced Thursday by Amanda Assucena) awakens to find an anxiously tardy White Rabbit (Stefan Gonçalvez). She of course must follow him, kicking off a series of Don Quixote-style adventures with wild, wacky and terrifying characters. Letting her curiosity guide her, she encounters a tea party hosted by a tap-dancing Mad Hatter (Edson Barbosa) and a slithering Cheshire Cat (whose dismantlement is made possible by a corps of dancer-puppeteers).

Indeed, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” will resonate strongly with those who adore “Alice” — so much so that Joffrey extended the production to three weekends before it opened. In any case, exploiting its usefulness as a ballet was far overdue. There is much within Wheeldon’s zany world for everyone to admire.

Very small children may not appreciate some scarier moments, most notably a scene at the Duchess’ house, in which viewers quite literally see how the sausage gets made. The brutish Duchess (Dylan Gutierrez) and her ax-wielding cook (Lucia Connolly) contribute some of the night’s most, um, salient imagery. The pair of them (along with henchmen Valentino Moneglia Zamora, Hyuma Kiyosawa and Xavier Núñez) are terrifically terrifying.

“Alice’s” third and final act is devoted almost wholly to the search for who stole the Queen of Hearts’ tart. It begins with a game of croquet, played with bendy flamingoes on pointe as the mallets, striking adorable summersaulting hedgehogs. This not-so-regal realm, ruled by prima ballerina Victoria Jaiani as supreme leader, embarks on a tribunal when it’s uncovered that the Knave of Hearts — a two-eyed Jack danced by the princely Alberto Velazquez — is most likely the offender and about to lose his head.

Hilarity ensues. As hard as it will be to peel your eyes from Jaiani, every once in a while, be sure to glimpse her ridiculous King (marking David Gombert’s glorious return to the Joffrey stage 15 years after retirement). There are tender moments, too, particularly in a satisfyingly sweet duet for Assucena and Velazquez as Alice tries to accept the blame in tart-gate.

She eventually prevails, if only by waking up back in Oxford. If there’s a lesson to be learned from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” it might be that taking the blame for your boyfriend’s impropriety could turn out poorly. That, and vindictive, power-hungry leaders whose kingdoms are built on a literal house of cards are not likely to succeed.

Cleverly, “Alice” borrows hallmarks from the ballets of Carroll’s time, winking at canonical works like “The Nutcracker,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella.” There’s a waltz of flowers; a pas de deux for our protagonist and her scrappy love interest; a hilariously satirized “Rose Adagio” for the Queen of Hearts and four suitors (in this case, hearts and clubs); and a shirtless, hookah-smoking sultan-turned-Caterpillar (Jonathan Dole) performing a seductive take on “the worm” with a quartet of scantily clad temple women. I’m pretty sure we didn’t need that last one when “Alice” premiered in London in 2011, and I’m certain we don’t need it in 2025 — though I’ll take the cameo of academy kids as sparkly pointe-shoed caterpillar legs all day, every day, plus Sunday.

To be clear, such tongue-and-cheek references now to 19th century ballet are generally welcome and especially fun for those who see the parallels — perhaps even more so to those familiar with Wheeldon’s catalog, too, which includes Joffrey’s nearly decade-old “Nutcracker.” In some instances, that ballet and this one parrot one another; Wheeldon went so far as to use some of the exact same ideas in his “Nutcracker’s” transformation and snow scenes, further tugging the plot parallels to these two coming-of-age stories set in magical fairy lands that may or may not have all been a dream.

But “Alice’s” superpowers, all due respect to “The Nutcracker,” are its magnificently evocative original score (by Joby Talbot) and Wheeldon’s pinpointed attention to detail in every character, masterfully embraced by the Joffrey’s excellent dancers, whose full-throttled performances and comedic prowess grab you and hold on for the entirety of this (very, very long) spectacle.

Another thing: Wheeldon’s imagination could only run this wild in a superbly-crafted Wonderland, made possible through the ingenuity of scenic and costume designer Bob Crowley, lighting designer Natasha Katz, projectionists Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington and puppeteer Toby Olié — seamlessly executed by a Joffrey team that, frankly, has never attempted something this big. “Alice” was originally created for London’s Royal Ballet, a company of 100 dancers and nearly 10 times Joffrey’s budget. Until Thursday, it had not been performed this side of the Atlantic. Pulling it off was going to be a challenge. But they did. And Wonderland turned out to be a risk that will pay off in spades.

Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.

Review: Joffrey Ballet presents “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (4 stars)