Damon Albarn’s Alice in Wonderland musical savaged by critics

DAMON ALBARN’s new ALICE IN WONDERLAND musical has been branded “disappointing” by critics.
The Blur frontman unveiled his latest theatre project, titled wonder.land and based on Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, at the Manchester International Festival in England on Thursday (02Jul15).
However, the show, which transports the heroine to the digital world of the Internet, failed to impress critics on its opening night.
Dominic Cavendish of Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper branded the musical, “Not a disaster, but disappointing,” adding, “It’s a brain-teasing riddle as peculiar as anything posed at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. How could so much creative talent, so much theatrical potential and so much technological innovation produce a new musical so lacking in the wonder stuff?…”
The Guardian’s Michael Billington writes, “The only problem I had with the show was one of information overload: quite simply, there often seems too much going on… The show… has much to recommend it, but ends up like a giant bag of liquorice allsorts: full of colour and variety but a bit rich to the taste and not something you’d want to devour too often.”
Patrick Marmion of the Daily Mail concludes that both Albarn’s score and the show itself is “hit and miss”, adding, “I could have done without the moralising social realism. A more total immersion in the digital fantasy version of Carroll’s classic would have been a greater escape.”