SEASON ONE '08

MALTHOUSE THEATRE AND
VICTORIAN OPERA PRESENT

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

AFTER LEWIS CARROLL
COMPOSER ALAN JOHN
LIBRETTIST ANDREW UPTON
CONDUCTOR RICHARD GILL
DIRECTOR MICHAEL KANTOR
SET, COSTUME AND PUPPET DESIGNER
PETER CORRIGAN
LIGHTING DESIGNER PAUL JACKSON
DRAMATURGE MARYANNE LYNCH
MUSICAL PREPARATION DAVID MCSKIMMING
ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR NICHOLAS CARTER
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ANNA TREGLOAN

CAST KANEN BREEN, MARGARET HAGGART, DAVID HOBSON, SUZANNE JOHNSTON, GARY ROWLEY, DIMITY SHEPHERD

In this unprecedented rendering of a much-loved classic, Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Operahave created an event as unique as the material at its heart.

On a boating trip with seven year old Alice Liddell, Carroll gifted her with the fantastic story which would soon be indelibly associated with her name - a gift that would re-cast her as a pawn in the fantastic underworld of The Looking Glass. This glass is as much kaleidoscope as mirror, where space and time are refracted, splintering into chaos as rhyming flowers, roaring royals and reluctant foodstuffs wage war on sense and sensibility. While beneath it all stretches the long shadow of this mad world’s creator, Master of Divinity, Lewis Carroll.

As the real and imaginary become entwined, Director, Michael Kantor and Conductor, Richard Gill lead you on a voyage through a vivid musical world created by leading theatre and opera composer, Alan John (Eighth Wonder, Hedda Gabler). From a libretto by Andrew Upton (Co-Artistic Director of Sydney Theatre Company), head-spinning puns and philosophical conundrums are conjured by a stellar cast performing some of the most memorable characters in the English language. And at its centre stands Carroll himself - the writer and photographer – whose twinned passions he employed to freeze the object of his affection, where age and memory could not work their ways. Is this what Alice comes to discover in her looking glass: that her image, perhaps, was never her own?