Paul Harnett and Nikki Davis-Jones are currently working on a musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which opens at the St James Studio on 9th March 2015.
Running for just 45 minutes, the show has been created as part of the St James Theatre's series of lunchtime plays for office workers, families and tourists to enjoy. Alice: A New Musical will feature original songs for characters such as the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter as well as an entirely new script.
Paul Harnett co-wrote Alice with Rebecca Crookshank and is also directing the production. He is a founding member of Butterfly Theatre Company, for which he has played Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol (St James Theatre), Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bridewell & St James Theatre). His credits also include: Raymond in Blue Remembered Hills (New Diorama), Joseph in Impotent (Lion and Unicorn Theatre) and The Apollo Victoria's 80th Birthday Gala. Paul directed As You Like It and The Importance of Being Earnest at the St James Theatre. He was recently the assistant director for The Vertical Hour at the Park Theatre.
Nikki Davis-Jones is working on Alice as the Assistant Director. She created the role of Elphaba in the original UK touring production of Wicked, following almost three years as standby Elphaba in the West End production (Apollo Victoria). Her credits also include: Maureen in Rent (UK Concert Tour), LIFT (Soho Theatre), Blues in the Night (Hackney Empire), Serena in Fame (UK Tour), Bubbles/understudy Chloe in Never Forget (Savoy), Lisa/understudy Sophie in Mamma Mia (Prince of Wales) and Linda in Blood Brothers (Phoenix).
Yesterday I spoke to Paul and Nikki about why they’re so excited to be working on Alice, how the show works as lunchtime theatre and why they’re having a great time in rehearsals…
Paul, as well as directing Alice you have also co-written the piece. How did the idea come about?
Paul Harnett: Well I’ve been doing these lunchtime shows for the past year at the St James. We’ve mainly been doing Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and stuff like that, but I wanted to see if we could do a forty-five minute musical as a lunchtime show. Alice was the obvious choice because it gives every single department working on the show ultimate creativity. You can set up a strange new world and script-wise we could do whatever we wanted with it; same for the lighting, costume and choreography and music – it gives you the scope to do something incredible. It helped me to get some incredible people involved.
Nikki, when you first heard about the project what made you want to jump on board?
