The play is based on a meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewellyn Davies at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the original Alice in Wonderland come face to face with the original Peter Pan. The play sees enchantment and reality collide as this brief encounter lays bare the lives of these two characters.
Understudies include Stefano Braschi for Peter Llewelyn Davies; Georgina Beedle for Alice in Wonderland; Henry Everett for both Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie; Christoper Leveaux for Peter Pan, Arthur Llewelyn Davies, Reginald Hargreaves and Michael Llewelyn Davies; and Pamela Merrick for Alice Liddell Hargreaves
Reception
Reviews for the production were positive for the play. Michael Billington in The Guardian wrote: "It's not a play that shocks or startles by its insights, but the reward lies in watching Dench and Whishaw recreate the agony and the ecstasy of inherited fame.".[1] Charles Spencer in The Telegraph wrote: "It’s a beautiful and searching play that will live long in the memory".[2] Libby Purves in The Times wrote "A meeting of two childhood muses, played by Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, breaks your heart open.".[3] However there was some criticism of the play. Henry Hitchings in The Evening Standard wrote: " this is a piece that uses lush language to compensate for its lack of real dynamism".[4] Despite this, the critics applauded the performance of Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, with one critic saying "Dame Judi and Mr Whishaw are good, she almost Queen Motherly these days, he so sensitive, so irredeemably moist, that he could do with sponging"[5]
