Burton’s Alice in Wonderland promises to be a “mad” success

It took me two days to be able to sit down and enjoy Tim Burton’s latest foray into the world of weird: Alice in Wonderland.

The sold-out show obviously appealed to two different types of viewers: avid fans of Disney’s classic, as well as Burton followers clad in Nightmare Before Christmas tees. A fan of the Burton/Depp partnership, I sat down expecting good things.

And I got them.

I have always been a fan of a Burton set. From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Nightmare Before Christmas I find that his style for curling plants and eerie buildings romanticizes the slightly gothic look I tend to shy away from. Here he is able to play with another dimension entirely, and we the audience appreciated the opportunity to step into Wonderland (now called “Underland”) and dodge the occasional object flung at our seats in classic 3D-movie style.

The acting was terrific, with Depp (though catapulted to a lead role) falling surprisingly to the side of the Red and White Queens portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway. It takes a magnificent actress to pull off the line “Off with her head!” without sounding ridiculous and over the top, but Bonham Carter managed to do so with a believable performance that I think we’ll see again come the Oscars next year. The Cheshire Cat, played by Stephen Fry, is the mysterious, sophisticated, maddening creature we expected him to be, and Depp’s Mad Hatter is convincingly off his rocker with enough tics and accents to remind us of the beloved Jack Sparrow.

The plot was an interesting blend of both the original classic and its sequel, “Through the Looking Glass.” While we won’t spoil the ending for you here, be prepared to see more than just an updated version of the Disney classic. We follow an older Alice who has grown up and is dealing with the societal responsibilities of her gender and class before she makes the mistake of following a hurried white rabbit we all find strangely familiar…

In all, Alice in Wonderland aims to please. It has all of the right ingredients for success, and will satisfy both Burton fans and fans of the original tale itself.

— Stephanie Maris