The idea for a musical version of ‘Alice’ has been a source of discussion between us, intermittently over a period of about two and a half years. We initially had the idea for a musical jamboree of differing styles and genres to complement each character, but Ben did not feel able at that time to do it justice. Matthew in turn didn’t want to just ‘musicalise’ the Wonderland stories, but to put a fresh spin on their content and themes.
It was not until the near completion of our third show Nonnunquam in the spring of 2004 that either of us felt ready to conceive an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work. The factors’ which then prompted us to consider this project were both personal and musical. Ben’s exposure to more classical, romantic and rock musical influences, and both of us having experienced in some form or another the type of person here portrayed as Alice enabled us to take a slant on this story both unique and very applicable to today. Also, Erin Burns (Alice, Production Design) who lives in Oxford - Carroll’s home, was involved in several of our earlier discussions and whilst we both stayed very much as the writing team in the project, her ideas at the outset have proved invaluable.
From a mixture of changing musical tastes and our curiosity with macabre art and literature, as well as our study of it; we decided to essentially write a ‘goth-rock musical’. During the progression of this initial concept, Ben expressed concern that in writing true goth-rock, a large audience group may be excluded from enjoying and appreciating this show. Thus, the rock influence was tempered along the way, to produce a dark rock musical with subtler textures and comic moments to straddle genres, forms and also to widen the audience base.
Alice in The Eighth Square is portrayed as a girl with a serious amount of teenage ‘issues’. Whilst many may dismiss this as cliched, fashionable, ‘what students would write’, and perhaps even dismiss it as a myth - sadly, both of us have witnessed it first hand - with dire consequences to those individuals concerned. This unwilling exposure enabled a deeper slant on the identity crises Alice suffers in the books themselves. The show we have written is both an adaptation from some fantastic children’s stories and also a distillation of our own experiences - hence it is billed as ‘based on themes freely adapted from Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland novels’. The real message of the show we believe, is that ‘nobody is noone’. If you exist - you are someone: and who that person is or becomes, is up to you.

The Writers

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