Alice’s Adventures at Valley View

This holiday season, 8th and 9th-graders present a fanciful show where anything goes—from talking rabbits and hidden passages to utterly ridiculous tea parties. 

A Big, Silly Show 

According to the student actors, the performances in this weekend’s will pack a punch in a play that is “bigger” than you’d expect: both visually and in terms of the quirky characters.

Alex Kaufman, a freshman who plays the Mad Hatter, said it is precisely “building the characters up and making them really big and over the top” that’s challenging about this show. For Kaufman’s take on the Mad Hatter, an exaggerated and amusing British accent helps do the trick. 

Several of the cast members cited the tea party scene as their favorite, as it marks the point where a silly show reaches perhaps its pinnacle of silliness. 

Literary Lessons on Stage 

Eighth-grader Lexie Michel, who plays Alice, described Valley View’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as “funny” and “crazy.” And while she’s thrilled to be playing the lead, it’s not the role she expected.  

“Last year I was in the musical and I was just part of the chorus, so I didn’t think I was going to get a big part at all,” Michel said.

Then she was cast as the show’s namesake. Michel plays Alice as precocious and wide-eyed in the wondrous world she finds—not unlike Lewis Carroll must have envisioned his heroine when he first wrote her.

And if the show brings to mind the illustrated pages of the original book rather than a colorful cartoon, then the Valley View cast and crew have done their job.

“It’s a different take on Alice,” said Director Beth Solberg. “It actually is most like the original script that was done in 1947. It’s most like the book.”

With predominantly black and white costuming and set design, this weekend’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is reminiscent of the book that started it all. And it’s a great literary lesson for the 45 8th and 9th-grade performers and 35 crew members who grew up with Disney-era animated Alice and the even more recent Tim Burton film. 

“I try to do as much as I can to make sure they’re telling the original story,” Solberg said.

An Early Holiday Present

There’s nothing necessarily holiday-themed about Valley View’s production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but—as Lexie Michel said—a ticket to one of this weekend's three performances could make a great present.