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Sara Keating, The Irish Times (Friday 29th May 2009)
Wonderland Theatre For theatre companies such as Wonderland, who are used to fending for themselves, the recession and funding cuts are not seen as a threat. Artistic director Alice Coghlan tells SARA KEATING about creating ambitious shows on a shoestring

WE DIDN’T HEAR much about “independent theatre” during the boom years, when expanding budgets across government departments was translated into increases in State subsidies for artists and arts organisations. But now that those budgets are shrinking again, Arts Council-funded organisations are struggling to maintain their prolific output under new financial conditions. With once-crowded theatre calendars begin to thin out as a consequence of, and in fear of further, funding cuts, it is an opportunity for independent theatre companies – seasoned to shoestring budgets and a skeleton production staff – to make their mark. Wonderland Theatre is one such company which seems to be coming into its own.

Wonderland, under the artistic direction of director and writer Alice Coghlan, has produced 10 new theatre productions since 2003, productions which have been as varied in form as in artistic style. They have ranged from traditional stagings of ghost stories to obscure sound-art performance pieces, and from intimate lunchtime operas to site-specific productions of Molière’s famous French comedies. Take, for example, two of the company’s most recent productions: a new translation of an obscure Italian restoration comedy, La Locandiera (or Mirandolina ), by Carlo Goldoni, accompanied by a four-course dining experience, and a one-act, one-woman, self-help spoof, Life Shop Till You Drop , which embarks on its fourth national tour this week.

While the ongoing success of Life Shop Till You Drop comes as a constant surprise to Coghlan, who wrote and first directed the show in 2007, she says that Wonderland “have always been very ambitious about what we want to achieve, no matter what the project is, no matter how little funding there is to support us”.

“Even so, when we first produced it at Bewley’s Cafe Theatre and Alan King suggested we take a three-week run, we thought there was no way that we would fill the venue. In the end it was the best-selling show that Bewley’s ever had, and it has become more successful rather than less successful the more we have produced it. It’s even been to Abu Dhabi! When we were on tour in Navan, someone from the Irish society there saw it, and invited us to bring it over to entertain the expats.”

Coghlan puts the show’s success down to the constant “quest for happiness” in contemporary society. “It taps into that neurotic side of us that is always looking for advice, or wondering what someone else would say or do,” she says. “But it questions it too, and also satirises the whole self-help industry, which is making billions out of our need to be happy. It’s basically saying that we need to take charge of our own destiny.”

The optimism of the show chimes well with Wonderland’s philosophy of creating work from meagre means. “I wish I could say it was some great decision not to get funded,” Coughlan jokes, “but the truth is we have tried. You know, we could have produced another show in the time we’ve spent filling out funding application forms, but we haven’t had any luck, despite great reviews and strong audiences for all our work. But all of the established companies – Rough Magic, Loose Canon, Bedrock – they all had to start from somewhere. Not being funded and finding other ways to do your work, whether that’s through profit-share or whatever, is just part of the process. We still have to make the best show that we can.”

In fact, the success of Life Shop Till You Drop has played a vital part in the company’s growth, as it is touring that provides it with some security in terms of income.

“When we tour, we are booked and paid by the venue, so it cuts the risk for us and means that we can all be paid properly and put whatever extra we make back into our next show,” Coghlan says. “And at this stage the show pretty much runs itself, so I can go down and set it all up with Clodagh but still have time for other projects.”

AND SO, as Life Shop Till You Drop heads off this week on another tour, Coghlan begins another Wonderland adventure, perhaps the company’s most ambitious yet: a site-specific production of Brendan Behan’s iconic but rarely produced Irish classic, The Hostage , at the newly renovated Pearse Centre on Pearse Street, the house where Pádraig Pearse lived until he was 12.

The month-long run, with a massive cast, will surely pose a big financial challenge for the company, but Wonderland is used to dealing with such eventualities. The production will fill a gap in the summer calendar, as more established theatre companies slim down their schedules in anticipation of the ever more difficult funding climate to come.

Roz Butler, Dublin Metro  (23rd January 2007)  ✮✮✮✮
Are you a self-help junkie? If so perhaps you could do with a little detox. This cautionary tale offers the perfect solution. Ailish McGovern (Clodagh Reid) is a girl who seems to practise more self-hindrance than self-help, and her story might ensure that you turn your back on pop psychology once and for all.

Recruitment Consultant Ailsih is 36 and single. Since the death of her father over a year ago, she has become very vulnerable. To cushion her grief she obsessively turns to self-help manuals in order to improve her life. Whether it comes to the trials of dating or tribulations of the work place, this girl has a text book to help her deal with every conceivable situation. She can barely step out the door without seeking advice from one guru or another. When she meets the man of her dreams, she goes into overdrive, manipulating situations so that he can see she’s clearly the one. The consequences are disastrous.

Ailish is like a little girl lost. Behind the biting comedy, Reid portrays with great understanding a lonely woman who is struggling to come to terms with her grief. As a result no matter how ridiculous Ailsih’s predicaments become, one always feels sympathy for her plight. And yet the only tears shed are ones of hilarious laughter. While there are undoubtedly touching elements to the play, the overriding tone is light and fun, thanks to Alice Coghlan’s wonderfully feel-good script and Reid’s ability to inhabit a number of comic characters, from Ailish’s irritating boss to her chain smoking matchmaker.

Edel Coffey, Sunday Tribune (21st January 2007)
January is an apt time to see a play about the evils of self-help books and new years resolutions. So Life Shop till you Drop, a one-woman show that casts a satirical eye over one year in the life of single thirty-something Ailish McGovern (played by Clodagh Reid), is a salutory lesson in what not to read.

McGovern has vowed 2007 will be the year she finds love, a promotion and ultimately happiness. Armed with nine of the best-selling self help books she aimshigh – to be branch manager of her recruitment agency, get married and win the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year award.

Writer and director Alice Coghlan’s clever script and pitch perfect self-help jargon are a delight, colourfully illustrating how we unconsciously use these phrases in our everyday home and work life.

There are funny portrayals of desperate singletons, with Ailish coming off like a manic Bridget Jones (scary thought), taking “Me Days” off work so she can do some “motivational crying”. Amidst the laughs, Coghlan makes the more serious point that most of the advice in these self help books is rubbish – and in the case of Ailish can do more harm than good. But she’s also pointing an accusatory finger at wider society. It’s not just the pop psychologists who are to blame for young women’s unhappiness with the single life but the “singles police” too – the mothers and married siblings who put pressure on those longing to find a soul mate, not to mention the modern-day pressure society puts on women to “have it all”: husband, children, career, oh, and that Woman of the Year Award.

This is a comic satire however and there are plenty of laughs , such as when Ailish finds out the man she is seeing is married with a child. Her sister tells her, “You’re just like that book Mam got us for Christmas you’re a woman who loves too much”. Underneath the laughs though Alice Coghlan questions whether the self-help industry has helped us or whether it has actually duped us into creating neuroses that were never there in the first place, putting off the men that may otherwise have been interested in us … and quite possibly ruining our chances of happiness.

Gerry Colgan, The Irish Times (January 19th 2007)
This one-hour lunchtime play, written and directed by Alice Coghlan, gets off to a neat start. A vivacious 36-year old woman in the audience leaps to her feet to receive an award – Tatler Woman of the Year. She is impelled to share her story of her success, and begins a year earlier when she identified two objectives: to get married and to get promoted.

Ailish is riddled with intellectual and verbal clichés such as ‘think in ink’ – writing them down will help us to remember her pearls of wisdom. For the matrimonial stakes she goes to a modern matchmaker, who fixes her up with dubious partners. Ailish learns that she has to kiss a lot of frogs to find her prince. On the job front, she is hired by a recruitment consultancy firm, which demands that you recruit more employees and keep doubling up to make any money. But it gives her a nice title to peddle to men at the dating agencies as she pursues her rules in shopping for life’s rewards. We follow Ailish through increasingly desperate initiatives until the play ends as it began, with a surprise.

It seems that the self-help industry is now a commercial reality, generating huge profits from the inchoate desires of people to be happy and successful. This gives the play a satirical edge, although its exaggerations are rooted in farce. Clodagh Reid plays Ailish with comic versatility, generating continuous laughter.

Back to Life Shop Till You Drop! Details                 Read More Wonderland Reviews

The Times (Thursday 2nd September 2010)

The Dublin-based company Wonderland, founded in 2003 by Alice Coghlan, staged her adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s robust comedy La Locandiera in a brightly-lit room at the Vittoria Restaurant in Edinburgh. The audience were treated like guests at an inn in 18th-century Florence, observing the action as we downed a lip-smacking three-course meal. Featuring six game actors, some of whom helped to serve the food, this was a hearty, enjoyable piece of dinner-theatre centred round 18th-century sexual politics and slightly reminiscent of The Taming of the Shrew.

Claire Jenkins played the saucy, scheming innkeeper Mirandolina in the spirit of a young Gina Lollobrigida, with a handful of mainly doting men understandably sucked into her bounteous orbit. Chief among them was Connolly Heron’s Ulster Gentleman, a skinny-legged figure whose staunch resistance to the fairer sex was gradually whittled away.

By the time that dessert came round this self-styled woman-hater was more than ready to eat out of her hand. There was also particularly good support from Damien O’Donnell as two contrasting manservants, one of whom demonstrated a nice line in ad-lib exchanges with the paying punters.

Fringe Guru, Edinburgh Fringe Festival  (Tuesday 24th August 2010) ✮✮✮✮

It’s not every day that you enter a twenty-first century Italian restaurant and find yourself in an eighteenth century Florentine inn. This is just what Wonderland’s production of La Locandiera delivers, however, in an innovative and highly entertaining evening of revelry, fine wine, great food, and interesting, if unconventional, company.

This particular company is made up of an avowed misogynist, a shameless scrounger, a presumptuous and persistent benefactor and of course the coquettish Mirandolina, mistress of the inn, played superbly by Claire Jenkins. Connolly Heron, as the initially steel-hearted woman-hater, does the traditionally comic transition from love-hater to love-slave particularly well; and the play proves a raucous and hilarious example of mans insecurities, womans infidelities and loves indignities.

The Italian restaurant that is the venue for La Locandiera is a fitting venue for this comedy set in 1750s Florence, and the play sits remarkably well within the evenings programme, with the three acts coinciding with the three courses of the meal. Given that it is first and foremost a theatrical performance, uninspiring food might be forgiven, but there is no need to make excuses for the menu at Restaurant Vittoria; it proves to be good value for money and, happily, decidedly twenty-first century.

The food,however, is one of the only apparently modern factors in the room in which the performance is staged: the cast frequently double as waiters, so that the audience become the guests at Mirandolina?s inn, privy to the same flirtatious behaviour as her onstage customers. The women in the audience, too, will feel privileged to be courted by some of Mirandolina’s many suitors, and anyone who would feel uncomfortable being serenaded by a man with a wig and powdered face should make an effort to avoid eye contact with the performers.

The company, then, manage to transform this small area into what genuinely feels like an eighteenth century tavern, and the acting, omic and lively, cannnot be faulted…

It is the experience as a whole that is worth paying for. In the huge programme of shows at the Fringe, La Locandiera, with its well-translated and modernised script, charismatic cast and ingenious staging, is memorable and charming.

The Skinny, Edinburgh Fringe Festival (August 2010) ✮✮✮✮

One of the more expensive nights on the Fringe – admittedly justified by the four course meal – La Locandiera is a thoroughly contemporary take on the classic dinner theatre and an eighteenth century classic. Revolving around a battle of the sexes, which is equally a battle of national temperaments, it is an early entry in the gender wars of the modern era.

If the sexual politics are firmly hetero-normative, the script has sympathy for both male and female. Even the villain, an Ulster Gentleman, is given justification: the heroine, the Italian innkeeper, is morally ambiguous enough to be both temptress and puritan. Light comedy from a pair of aristocratic suitors rounds out the plot – their rivalry is both the context for the central conflict and a curt satire on the obsessions with money and status.

The proceedings gallop along, musical interludes break up the arguments about men and women and the elongated seduction, the misogynist is defeated and the appropriate marriage is arranged. The whole cast are delightful, the serious issues are treated with appropriate levity and the interactions between cast and audience are beautifully handled.

An example of how imaginative setting – an Italian restaurant – and clear direction can take an apparently irrelevant play and make it engaging, Wonderland Productions have reinvented light entertainment with a starter of lush costume, a side order of philosophical debate, a main course of excellent performances and a sweet desert of song and dance.

Three Weeks, Edinburgh Fringe Festival  (Saturday 14th August 2010) ✮✮✮✮

Thespian and culinary treats abound in this unique and playful site-specific production of Goldoni’s classic Italian comedy, which takes place in Edinburgh’s stylish Vittoria Restaurant.
The audience find themselves in the midst of the action, tucking into their dinner as lively banter and sword fights literally surround them. The talented cast of six – most notably, Damien O’Donnell (Fabrizio/The Manservant) – establish a great rapport with the audience, skilfully transforming the intimate space into an eighteenth-century Florentine inn, and bursting now and then into joyous song.

Eccentric characters, live music and a witty script coupled with creative staging and inspired direction by Alice Coghlan make for a memorable theatrical experience; we piled out of the venue with full bellies and full hearts.

Edinburgh Spotlight, Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Tuesday 10th August 2010)

In Goldoni’s La Locandiera or ‘The Mistress of the Inn’, the gentlemen fall at the feet of said mistress – all bar one, known in this production as ‘The Ulster Gentleman’. He has professed himself a hater of women who has never been in love and never will: bit of a challenge that – and La Locandiera herself, Mirandolina, takes it up to amusing and even thought-provoking effect.

This battle of the sexes is tantalisingly presented in one of Edinburgh’s most popular Italian restaurants complete with a four course meal (menu available from Wonderland Productions’ website). The food is fine and the story is very engaging as Mirandolina continues to play with her numerous competitive beaux while pursuing the affections of the recalcitrant gentleman.

The performances are confident and Mirandolina herself easily holds centre stage with a witty, teasing and layered performance. The audience is treated to bantering interaction from the cast, Goldoni’s witty dialogue amusingly delivered and enjoyed, and actors filling the space, seemingly familiar with the restaurant’s bar and handling these real props well. Fine serenading accompanies the food and punctuates the action, using popular pieces both classical and modern.

The laid-back feel of the presentation sometimes lacks forward momentum, though both Mirandolina and the Conte – her extravagantly rich admirer – tend to push things on again. The actor playing her loyal servant (and would-be husband) Fabrizio plays with the audience very well, also in his guise as the Ulster Gent’s servant.

The show itself is entertaining, both witty and interesting, and the nature of this dinner-entertainment presentation means that the company you keep and atmosphere in the restaurant will definitely contribute to your enjoyment of the piece.

Irish Mail on Sunday (Sunday 15th March 2009) ✮✮✮✮

Delicious Florentine Fancy
If you fancy an unusual evening out, you couldn’t do better than this eighteenth century Italian comedy of love and manners, which includes in the ticket price an excellent three-course tapas meal with wine.

Wonderland Productions has been making the running in recent years with site-specific presentations and this one is perfect for the intimate setting of the Port House Tapas Bar which, for the night, becomes the Florentine inn of the flirtatious Mirandolina, the hostess of the title. The action occurs in the inn, between the bar and the tables where the audiences sit as punters with whom the cast often interact.

The wealthy old roué (Mal Whyte) competes with a penniless marquis (Neill Fleming) and the humble waiter (Damien O’Donnell) for the hand of Mirandolina (Claire Jenkins). But the arrogant gentleman from Ulster (Connolly Heron) scoffs at the idiocy of men humiliating themselves for women.

The feisty Mirandolina sets out to break down the Irishman’s self-assurance and there is some lovely interaction between Jenkins and Heron in this teasing battle of the sexes. The characters also sing songs to guitar accompaniment. The comic touch is so assured that they even get away with playing the Dean Martin hit, That’s Amore.

The tantalising question is whether Mirandolina is looking for the love of the Irishman or simply using her wiles to conquer his misogyny. The brisk comedy ridicules the pretensions of the aristocracy while applauding the ordinary folk. Damien O’Donnell doubles splendidly as the Irishman’s manservant.

Translation and direction are by Alice Coghlan, who makes expert use of the small space. It’s the sort of show that returns play-going to the realms of pure entertainment.

Sunday Business Post  (Sunday 8th March 2009) ✮✮✮✮

Wonderland Production’s new site-specific show blends live theatre with gourmet dining. Based on Carlo Goldoni’s 18th century comedy, it transforms the Port House tapas bar in Dublin city centre into a Florentine inn.

The bare brick walls of the restaurant require little set dressing, and the candlelit ambience laid out by the frock-coated, guitar strumming actors and the ravishing landlady Mirandolina set the scene for the complex romantic games that will unfold.

The audience are treated by the actors as guests, charming them with playful eye contact and direct asides. The cast confidently negotiates a two way relationship with the spectators, although it never becomes intrusive.

The comedy is an old-fashioned kind – four men vexed by a woman’s wily ways – but the eventual reversal, in which Mirandolina manipulates her happy-ever after, could almost be read as an early proto-feminist gesture. But the drama is more playful than political.

In a traditional theatre setting, this would make for gently amusing theatre, but what makes La Locandiera so special is that the dining experience that Wonderland Productions simultaneously offers the audience. This is not merely because the ticket price includes a three course meal and a glass of wine, but because the idea is so well integrated into the action.

At the end of the first act, for example, Mirandolina herself serves us while confessing her devious plan. It is an intimate, charming conceit.

The cast provides transitional musical entertainment between the acts – Damien O’Donnell on guitar, the irrepressible Mal Whyte on bodhrán, and Claire Jenkins sweet voiced Mirandolina singing with support from Connolly Heron and Neil Fleming.

Director Alice Coghlan makes a slight slip here with her choice of music, crowd-pleasing anthems like That’s Amore break the otherwise carefully constructed frame. However, Tara Jones Hamilton’s brilliantly constructed costumes- which survive close scrutiny even in this intimate setting – are testament to the attention to detail that Coghlan achieves throughout La Locandiera.

This is not just an unusual event, but one that is executed almost to perfection.

Lucy White, Metro  (Friday 6th March 2009) ✮✮✮✮

Florentine fops, farce and feminine wiles combine for a unique night of 18th century Carlo Goldoni entertainment upstairs at the Port House tapas bar. Mirandolina (Claire Jenkins) is ‘La Locandiera’ – an inn keeper and a coquette to boot, driving her male tenants to distraction, among them the Marchese (Neill Fleming), a poodle-haired miserly dandy and The Conte (Mal Whyte) a powder puffed nobleman who showers her with diamonds. She ‘treats herself to all of them’ once in a while, but by massaging their egos rather than their sweaty breeches, which only makes them want her more. But when an Ulster Gentleman (Connolly Heron) checks in and declares that he is ‘the enemy of all women and Italian women in particular’ proclaiming that he would rather ‘endure a latent strain of malaria’ than marriage, the furious Mirandolina vows to vindicate her sex by making him fall in love with her.

An exuberant battle of the sexes ensues between the restaurants tables, the buffoonery interspersed with live Neapolitan arias, folk and pop songs. Wisely Jenkins represents Mirandolina as a woman’s woman rather than a brazen hussy, winning over the female members of the audience with conspiratorial asides, and Damien O’Donnell plays both Fabrizio and the Gentleman’s manservant charmingly…

La Locandiera is a tasty prospect, not least for the three course dinner and a glass of wine that accompanies the performance.

The Irish Times (Sunday 8th March 2009)

 
“The savage Irish beast slowly moves towards domestication!” The comedy La Locandiera was written by Carlo Goldoni in Venice in 1753. A cheeky, frothy piece about playacting, which questions the role of women in Italian society, it brought to the stage the character of a seductive, feisty and independently minded innkeeper called Mirandolina.

Mirandolina is a woman who controls not just the purse-strings but the hearts and longings of her various bewigged and bewitched male guests, ultimately turning her attentions to the inn’s latest arrival, the misogynistic Ulster Gentleman, who would rather endure “the latent strains of malaria” than the attentions of a woman. Har, har.

Wonderland Productions, a young company under the directorship of Alice Coghlan, has shown spirit in its staging of classical theatre, recently bringing a Leoncavallo opera to lunchtime audiences and also producing a site-specific production of Molière’s The Miser. In truth, its latest offering is a somewhat dusty farce, but the company has once again set itself a challenge in terms of form. Innovatively, the piece is performed as a theatrical cabaret, with the upstairs bar of the Port House doubling as an 18th-century Italian inn, where the drama, played out around the restaurant tables, is accompanied by wine and tapas.

This is a warm, well-intentioned piece of theatre, and, in this intimate setting, the five musically accomplished actors give relaxed and polished performances. Connolly Heron, as the Ulster Gentleman, with his longing for fine linen and his capitulating misogyny, is terrific, as are Mal Whyte, Neill Fleming and Damien O’Donnell as aspiring suitors to Mirandolina (the seductively able Claire Jenkins).

La Locandiera provides a convivial evening, and Wonderland is to be congratulated on pushing ahead with its singular vision.

Back to La Locandiera Production Details             Read More Wonderland Reviews

  1960: Tonight rhe New IRA kidnapped a nineteen-year-old soldier as he was leaving an Armagh Dance Hall. The IRA declares that it will shoot hostage Leslie Williams, if their ‘Belfast Boy’ is executed at Belfast Gaol tomorrow morning.

Wonderland’s site-specific staging of Brendan Behan’s great tragicomedy transforms the birthplace of Padraic Pearse, the martyred leader of the Easter Rising, into the 1960s Dublin brothel-cum-safe house where the IRA hold Leslie Williams hostage – and where you can ‘sit up’ for the night with him. This historic Victorian terrace is home to fallen rebel heroes, homosexual navvies, catholic evangelists, pimps, whores, convent girls and decaying civil servants who are loyal to the nationalist cause. They entertain Private Williams with jigs and reels, romance, rock ‘n’ roll dancing, rebel songs and tales of Ireland’s glorious past, whilst the IRA guards wait for a reprieve from Belfast – or the executions of the coming dawn.

Wonderland’s staging of The Hostage took place from the 21st July to the 16th August 2009 at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin.

Listen to:

RTÉ’s Lyric FM’s Artszone, presented by Aedín Gormley, discusses the show with Alice Coghlan & Morgan Cooke

Newstalk Culture Shock radio show with Tom Dunne interviews Alice Coghlan about The Hostage.

Listen to 2 songs from the show by Morgan Cooke

#1: “We’re Here Because We’re Queer” features Morgan Cooke, Colm O’Brien, Michael Bates & Diana O’Connor.

#2: “Open the Door Softly” features Morgan Cooke and Kerrie O’Sullivan.

Credits: Music is by Morgan Cooke; Roseanne Lynch on Sax and Lyrics by Brendan Behan.

What the Critics Say

“Without any risk of overstatement, Wonderland Productions is a company that is really going places. A plucky, ideas-driven and indefatigable theatre group, they have had no easy access to conventional venues and have learned to improvise handsomely, staging their works in various site-specific venues.” –  The Irish Times

 

“Rarely was a company so aptly named” – Centre Stage, Dublin City FM

 

“Delivered with such exhilarating enthusiasm” – The Irish Mail on Sunday

 

“Terrific direction and choreography by Alice Coghlan” –  The Sunday Independent

 

“A worthy triumph of the imagination” –  The Sunday Times

 

“What a great choice of play for Wonderland to take on…the site-specificness is wonderful and the music works so well” -Lyric FM Artszone

 

“Highly recommended” – Dublin City FM

 

“One not to miss” – The Independent

 Read Full Reviews

Credits
From Wonderland Productions Ltd.
Starring:
Michael Bates, Morgan Cooke, Neill Fleming, Robert Harrington, Roseanne Lynch, Eithne McGuinness, Colm O’Brien, Diana O’Connor, Noel O’Shea, Kerrie O’Sullivan, Martin Philips, Lesa Thurman, Francis Xavier Usanga.

The Production Team:
Director & Choreographer: Alice Coghlan
Producer: Nina Antonioli
Composer: Morgan Cooke
Lyrics by: Brendan Behan
Musical Director: Morgan Cooke
Costume Design: Yvonne Carry & Tara Mulvihill
Set Designer: Nimah Dunphy
Props Designer: Eve Parnell
Hair Dressing: Joan Thorpe
Make-Up: Peter Carroll
Fight Director: Keith Ward
Assistant Musical Director: Stella Konik
Assistant Director: Sarah Finlay
Stage Manager: Siobhan Killen
Assistant Stage Managers: Jean Igoe & Laura Weafer
Company Administration: Grainne Lynch
Photography: Clare Conway
Poster/Flyer, Programme & Web: mongoliandesign.com

Nikki Walsh, The Irish Independent, Weekend Review (Saturday 10th April 2010)

Cucumber sandwiches, warm buttered scones and steaming pots of tea are just some of the treats you can expect to be served at Wonderland Production’s latest show, a reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray. One of the many performances that will be held in Dublin as part of the ‘One City, One Book’ project, the show is more an imaginative re-enactment of the book than a reading, something Wonderland’s founder and artistic director Alice Coghlan likes to call “a play with a narrative”.“We are asking the audience to imagine everything with us” says Alice.

Taking the book to the stage, or rather the James Joyce Tea Rooms of Bewley’s, has been the biggest challenge of the production. “Wilde wrote the book as a young man and it is overwritten; there are a lot of repetitions. We are cleaning that up, getting to the point. The actors only speak Wilde’s words and it feels as if they are passing the narrative back and forth. It’s good for the book.”

Of course it doesn’t get more Wildean than afternoon tea, and its ceremony – not to mention the sense of theatre- has been incorporated in to the show, with the actors helping themselves to the odd cuppa as they tell each other, and the audience, the story.
Alice has taken her menu very seriously with promises of towering cake stands, mini croissants and calorific buns. “It captures the hedonistic spirit of the book perfectly,” she says. “It allows us to do what Wilde did – play with his audience. They think they are indulging in the niceties, the formalities of afternoon tea, and then we hit them with a story that, despite its obsession with surfaces and masks, has a dark underbelly.”

Presenting a double bill of food and theatre is something the Wonderland are good at. In 2008, their lunchtime opera at Bewley’s Café Theatre was a big hit with Dublin audiences while, more recently, their translation of the obscure restoration comedy La Locandiera, was served up alongside a four-course tapas menu, re-introducing Irish audience to the concept of dinner theatre.
It’s a refreshing approach that Alice likes to describe as “interactive theatre” and which has, over the last seven years, resulted in a wide range of shows, from cheeky musicals to French comedies in site specific locations. ”Our first show was a comedy ghost show in a pub” says Alice. “Actors were crawling through audiences chairs.”

Its not for the fainthearted. Ask Alice about the company’s near disasters and she is happy to list, with the amusment of a seasoned pro – missing cutlery, flaming plates of food and boisterous audiences are all hazards of the job. But engaging with audiences makes for great banter and some memorable one-liners. “In La Locandiera one of our actors asks the audience for advice as to whether he should marry. Someone shouted, ‘Only with a pre-nup!”

At a time when most theatre companies are reeling from budget cuts, Wonderland looks set to capitalise on years of hard graft and creativity. “We never got any funding,” says Alice, “so we are used to fending for ourselves. Passion has been the only think we have had to incentivise our projects and that has been no bad thing,. Money has and will always be a problem, but by being independent we have also had the freedom to do what we want.”
This freedom, and passion, has resulted in a number of successes, including Life: Shop Till You Drop, a one-woman, one act play that Alice first wrote and directed in 2007, now on its fifth international tour. Next came a production of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, staged in the birthplace of Padraig Pearse, which opened to rave reviews last year. La Locandiera meanwhile goes to the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

Now firmly installed as artists in residence at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, where they have received a lot of support from local audiences, Coghlan’s vision for the future is clear. “We’ve always tended to be ambitious and now its time to raise the bar. This year seems to have been about the classics but next year I would like us to return to opera and also to experiment with new writing.

Until then its back to rehearsals. With actors Michael James Ford, Simon Coury and Michael Winder all veterans of the Gate and no strangers to Wilde’s work, heading the line-up, it will be interesting to see what Dubliners make of the place Wonderland will create beyond the private imaginations of the reader and within the public space of the theatre, served with tea and lashings of Wildean wit.

The Picture of Dorian Gray takes place in the James Joyce Tearoom at Bewley’s of Grafton St from April 13 to May 1 at 4.30pm. Booking can be made on 0818 205 205 or online at www.ctb.ie

Louise Finn, The Dubliner    (Sep 2010) ✮✮✮✮

The tale of The Picture of Dorian Gray has aged well. Wilde’s exploration of the allure of youth is as fresh faced and relevant today as it was when first published in 1890. We exist in an era obsessed with remaining forever young. Had he made his pact today, Dorian would probably be working in Hollywood.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Dorian Gray sits for a portrait by the artist Basil Hallward who thinks the picture might be the his finest piece of work yet. Just before he finishes, his friend Lord henry Wotton calls and is transfixed by Dorian’s beauty and youth. He advises Dorian that the best way to live is in a haze of hedonism and aestheticism. The portrait is triumphantly unveiled and on seeing it, with Lord Henry’s words in his mind, Gray makes a plea that he should not age but rather the picture will.

Complex themes aside, Wilde’s novel relies heavily on the imagination of the reader to conjure up the beauty and monstrosity of its titular character making it a tall order to adapt, especially into one act. But Alice Coghan has done a sterling job in both adaptation and direction, extracting the most relevant exchanged and cleverly allowing the actors to deliver passages of prose that move the story along.

The staging, just after dinner in Bewleys beautiful James Joyce balcony, lends a touch of the Victorian drawing room to proceedings and helps in the creation of a rather decent atmosphere. This is aided by the fact that we’re polishing off our lemon tart and vino when the actors begin playing: indulging in naughty pleasures while being warned about their folly. The biggest problem for any adaptation of Dorian is finding someone who matches our idea of what he should look like. His transfixing beauty and charm are vital and initially Michael Winder is not the traditional matinee idol hottie that recent film adaptations have cast. But there’s something striking about him and the actors’ change from the innocent boy to the corrupt villain happens so subtly that we identify with Basil’s shock in realising this young man has become a monster. A very nuanced performance.

Winder is supported by Michael James Ford and Simon Coury who both gave flawlessly executed, commanding performances. It’s no mean feat to keep a play going when you’re eyeballing someone chewing on desert or trying to speak over the street cleaning machines passing by outside. Mind you, you probably shouldn’t listen to anything this review says, as Lord Henry remarks “Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.” So go see it and judge for yourself.

Dave Madden, DublinCulture.ie ( 7th Apr 2011)

Last year’s choice for One City, One Book was Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and as part of the festival Wonderland Theatre put on a play of the book in Bewley’s Cafe on Grafton Street. The show received rave reviews (“must see theatre”, “an exquisite adaptation”) so perhaps unsurprisingly Wonderland have brought it back for another run in the same beautiful setting of Bewley’s. This time it’s a dinner show. This is a very distinctive play. There’s no stage – the actors use the same space the patrons are dining in. Even the most snug, intimate of theatres can’t match the immediacy of this. With the spectators so close to the actors the quality of the acting has to be high, and it is. The room itself is beautiful, and very well suited to the play; props used in the play blend easily into the decor. The story is a well-known one; the story of a young man, Dorian Gray, given the chance to keep his youth and beauty beyond natural limits. It’s surprisingly intense, though that might be due to the setting. As an adaptation it’s superb – it really has the flavour and wit of Wilde’s own plays. Dinner is served by Bewley’s prior to the start of the show. (It’s similar to their lunch menu in portion size.) I’d suggest the tagliatelle, as it’s something of a signature dish. The dessert was also good and the coffee was excellent. The only small concern I’d express is that at one hour and thirty minutes without an interval, the play is quite demanding. Don’t let that put you off – just be aware that if you’re tired after a long day’s work, the intimacy of the setting might make this play less relaxing than most. If however you’re a tourist – wow! Wilde plus Bewley’s is a great combination. I’d also recommend the play very highly if you’re a frequent theatre-goer looking for something unusual and different. Conclusion: enjoyable, well-acted and novel. If you missed it last year, give it a g

Peter Crawley, The Irish Times (Sep 2010)

“All art is quite useless,” wrote Oscar Wilde, approvingly, in the preface to his only novel. The phenomenon of dinner theatre might support the claim, where art is something to be consumed along with a main course and desert; diverting, nourishing and easily digested.

Adapter and director Alice Coghlan is faithful to Wilde’s Gothic melodrama. The spine of the narrative is retained, its slimmed-down prose divided neatly between three protagonists: the initially beatific Dorian (Michael Winder), his besotted portraitist Basil Hallward (Michael James Ford), and his serpentine corruptor Lord Henry (Simon Coury- all of whom share the narrator’s voice. One happy consequence is that Wilde’s familiar epigrams are treated fondly but without reverence.

The freshest aspect of Coghlan’s reading is in its clear-sighted simplicity. There is no set to speak of, apart from an empty gilt-edged picture frame, and designer Tara Jones-Hamilton wisely decides that a story bound between social clubs, drawing rooms and a dusty attic will feel right at home on the third floor of Bewleys. The space slightly hampers our access to the performances, though, where Michael James Ford’s saturnine longing makes a more satisfyingly intriguing character than the head-tossing figure of the novel, while Simon Coury is the embodiment of subversive languor.

The near-erotic fascination the men have for the boys youth is laid on thick, with heavy echoes of Wilde’s own sexual double life: it is “a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter”, as Basil might say. That may explain the marginal role of women, but it leads the production into one distracting tonal mis-step when Ford makes a parodic appearance as Lady Henry. Elsewhere, the abandoned actress, Sybil Vain, is more pointedly and poignantly represented by an empty chair and the gesture is both intelligent and sinister: crystallising the novel’s dualities between reality and appearance, truth and construct, life and art. If Winder’s Dorian leaves a fainter impression, it’s because Wilde’s beautiful, impressionable anti-hero is, at root, a compelling cipher. That empty picture frame says it all. As we project our imagined portrait of degradation and disfigurement between its edges, Wonderland rekindles Wilde’s fascinating idea. Ultimately, Dorian is not a picture of evil, but a blank canvas for our own guilt, sins and desires.

Declan Burke, The Sunday Times (Sunday 2nd May 2010)

Performed in the round at the James Joyce Tea Room at Bewley’s Cafe, this production creates an intimacy designed to amplify the nuances on Oscar Wilde’s gothic take on the libertarian credo. Dorian Gray (Michael Winder) evolves from a callow narcissist to soulless killer, his journey is observed by his artist friend, Basil (Michael James Ford), and his predatory Svengali, Lord Henry (Simon Coury), with Ford and Coury also playing a number of smaller parts. An exquisite adaptation by Alice Coghlan, who also directs, sees all three characters narrating events, which has the effect of drawing the audience in, as the actors move through the tables, and implicate the audience in Dorian’s immorality. A deceptively sedate pace belies a wealth of compelling narrative while a judicious use of Wildean epigrams distracts from the suddenness with which Dorian is transformed into a monster. All three performances are strong, although the initially cherubic Winder is superb in revealing the full ramifications of the “horrible sympathy” he enjoys with his alter ego.

Sara Keating Irish Theatre Magazine (26thth April 2010)

The problem with The Picture of Dorian Gray is that it is seriously over-written, even by Oscar Wilde’s standards. However, the style of the book is a self-conscious gesture of verbosity. When the book was first published in 1890, it attracted notoriety for being “unclean,” “effeminate,” and “contaminating.” Republished in 1891, Wilde was at pains to disguise the homoerotic undertones of the story in as much social decorum as he could pile on, resulting in several extra unnecessary chapters. This is the form of the book that exists in print today, and while The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the best gothic stories ever imagined, it almost drowns in its own excessive style. Basically, it needs a good edit – and this is precisely what Alice Coghlan does in her excellent adaptation of the book for the stage.

Wonderland Productions theatrical interpretation The Picture of Dorian Gray takes place in a cafe rather than a theatre. This is the second time that the company is using the backdrop of a working food venue as staging device; their 2009 production of La Locanderia, which unfolds over a four course meal, was so successful that it is still touring nationwide. Twinning theatre with a secondary social event (in this case afternoon tea) is certainly a good marketing ploy, breaking the formality associated with the theatre, and while in The Picture of Dorian Gray Wonderland do not quite manage to make afternoon tea critical to the staging, the dainty tiered platters of cucumber sandwiches and the mahogany-hued ambience of the James Joyce Tea Rooms certainly evoke an era of civilised Victorian grandeur.

Staged at 4.30 in the afternoon, the production unfolds against the naturally lit backdrop of open windows, where the muted noises of a Grafton Street shopping day might be the “dim roar of London” that our narrator, Basil Hallward alludes to as he sets the scene for the unfolding tale of supernatural horror. Coghlan’s adaptation moves seamlessly between narration and dialogic interchange, the narrated events adding pace at key junctures, as the story moves towards its inevitable uncanny end.

Michael James Ford, an expert in performing Wilde’s prose works (he has adapted and performed many of his stories for the stage), brings a perfect plummy depth to his narration and a pompous passion to Basil’s relationship with the radiant Dorian. Lord Henry is a less salubrious character, and with his striking pale face and bold dark eyebrows, the caped Simon Coury commands our attention in much the way that he hypnotises the decadent Dorian’s, with his self-righteous philosophising and certainty about life. Meanwhile, Michael Winder – his cherubic face further softened by curls – gives us a spoilt weak Dorian, a vessel into which men and women pour their fantasies; a man without his own character; a man indeed without a soul.

Wonderland Productions’ facilitate a fascinating, civilised afternoon at the theatre, and a more than satisfying version of this difficult novel, which would become the defining book of Wilde’s career. For if, as Basil asserts in one of many pithy epithets about art, every painting is “a portrait of the artist not the sitter,” The Picture of Dorian Gray, is perhaps as close as we get to a confessional throughout his rich creative oeuvre. Just four years after the revised edition of the book was published, he was arrested for “gross indecency” and sentenced to prison, where he would later die. Perhaps that is the true horror that haunts The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde’s realisation of his own impending doom.

Shaun Dunne, Le Cool (Thursday 22th April 2010)

A three-tiered sandwich tray, a pot of tea and a dip into the dainty, yet dark world of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is the immersive- and extremely well constructed latest offering from the veritable Wonderland Productions.

The play was notoriously used against Wilde when he was put to trial on charges of sodomy in 1895. Dorian Gray is a beautiful young man who goes about the business of breaking hearts and ruining lives following the projection of his soul onto a portrait of him done by a male admirer. Themes of art, love, sex and vanity are explored throughout Alice Coghlan’s adaptation of this classic text in which the narrative’s anti-hero stays forever young while growing steadily depraved.

The actors play wonderfully with the script and keep their audience’s attention throughout. Catch this classic while you still can.

Lucy White, Metro Herald (Thursday 22th April 2010) ✮✮✮✮

The muse of earnest painter Basil Hallward (Michael James Ford, pictured on the left) and plaything of nefarious Lord Henry (Simon Coury, right), beautiful Dorian (Michael Winder, centre) makes a Faustian pact never to grow old while instead his portrait ages. It’s not long, however, before the trade-off becomes clear – in selling his soul for youth, his likeness grows older and uglier with every sin he commits.

It’s a well-known Gothic horror, and this year’s Dublin: One City, One Book selection, but few actors have played out the opium highs and wretched lows in a cafe during real-time afternoon tea.

Adapted and directed by Alice Coghlan for Wonderland Productions, the three actors move convincingly around the tea rooms, no mean feat, given the unnervingly close proximity to their audience, and also a lack of eerie lighting design. But whether picking out a carnation from a table display or wafting incense under our noses to evoke an opium den, they do so with relish. Elfin Winder is perfectly cast as lord snooty Dorian, while Coury’s jaded rake Lord Henry is the perfect foil to Ford’s tragic Basil.

Also, Alun Smith deserves a Victoria sponge for his subtle sound design, ranging from gentle birdsong during garden scenes to clattering street noise.

Culch.ie (Saturday 17th April 2010)

The tea-room was filled with the rich odour of brewing coffee, and when the light spring sun cast it’s gentle rays across the spanning windows the dim roar of Grafton Street was no more than the bourdon note of a distant organ. No, you haven’t fallen into a decadent drawing room circa 1890 but an afternoon of delicious temptation with a production of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

Wonderland Productions, in association with Dublin One City One Book present afternoon tea with a Wilde twist in the James Joyce Tea Rooms in Bewleys, Grafton Street. Acted and narrated by Lord Henry (Simon Coury), Basil (Michael James Ford) and Dorian (Michael Winder) the play is intimate and thoroughly charming. Shared narration of the text intermingled with the dialogue means that the play loses little of Wilde’s delicious flair for description.

For those who have been living under an illiterate rock all of their lives The Picure of Dorian Gray is the scandalous fiction of a young man, Dorian, who around the turn of the 20th century, arrives in London having inherited his estranged grandfather’s house. His new friend Basil, inspired by Dorian’s beauty paints his portrait, arguably Basil’s best work. On seeing the portrait and under the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian wishes that he could stay young and beautiful forever. (A deal that in this production, either by coincidence or wonderful foresight was ominously struck in symphony with nearby Grafton Street bells.)

If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

Somehow this wish is granted and the sins of Dorian’s hedonistic life of indulgence, alcohol, drugs and sexual deviancy are borne out on the portrait as the true reflection of his soul while his handsome face remains unmarred by the turn of time.

Witty, sexy and dark, The Picture of Dorian Gray is my all time favourite book as can be evidenced by a snap shot of my book shelf, (yes, I have it in different languages but we all have our indulgences) and this afternoon delight was just wonderful.

Helen Boylan, Sunday Business Post

Wonderland Productions adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic gothic horror fiction doesn’t take itself too seriously. This daytime theatre, set in and around the tables of a buzzing city centre cafe, offers an accessible version of Wilde’s tale to audiences who can enjoy afternoon tea as the drama unfolds.

As we sip tea and nibble from tiered cake stands of pastries, scones and cucumber and ham sandwiches, artist Basil (Michael James Ford) explains to his visiting friend Lord Henry (Simon Coury) about a portrait he has painted of a beautiful youth, Dorian Gray (Michael Winder), with whom the artist is infatuated.

This fine work of art is denoted here by an empty picture frame, requiring the audience to fire up their imagination to see what a fine painting it might be. Basil and Henry agree it is a wonderful portrait – “he looks like he’s made of ivory and rose leaves” – and when Dorian sees the finished work, he is in awe of himself.

But his admiration sours with the realisation that his youthful beauty is ephemeral. “How sad it is,” Dorian despairs. “I shall grow old and horrible and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young.”

In order to stay forever young as the picture grows old, he trades his soul. And so begins a story which explores aestheticism, morality and duplicity.

Under Alice Coghlan’s direction, the cast fare ably under such intimate scrutiny from the audience.

As the actors have nowhere to hide, neither does the audience, all of whom sit facing different directions in bright daylight. A minor quibble would be that the show’s running time (100 minutes with no interval) could have been tighter.

But with some amusing performances and Wilde’s many quotable quotes (“Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner”), this show breathes new life into afternoon tea.

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