ALICE & ALAN IN WONDERLAND
Inside every great woman is a gay man screaming to get out. That’s what Stephen Carnell brings to the stage in a modern-day, erotic adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Alan and Alice are two small-town virgins who fall into the depths of depravity in the nightclub that is Wonderland. I spoke to the hilarious Hugh Munro who plays the Red Queen, a “drag queen diva in every sense of the word” who told me about the very adult pantomime that is going to take the Mardi Gras festival by storm. “It’s a tale of exploration, courage and sexual awakening set in Sydney’s Oxford St.” Lewis Carroll’s famed characters are given the rainbow makeover and will sing, dance and tell a story that we all know so well – the coming of age of a gay man and his fag hag. Let’s face it, it’s a common relationship in Sydney – a girl and her gay best friend. Hugh explains that, “young girls who are not quite sure of themselves adopt a gay man because he’s got all of the mouth and confidence that they are looking for. Alice may start off as a prim and proper young girl, but a night in Wonderland is all it takes, experiencing her first orgasm under the table at the Mad Hatters tea party!” Along the way she meets the Cheshire Cat: the bisexual young feline who hasn’t quite found herself and thus experiments with a lot of drugs. The Tweedles: a lesbian couple and pole dancing act who, “are so together” that they move and react with one another in a typically symbiotic butch/femme lesbian way. The token straight man works as the security guard: AKA the Door Mouse. And of course the bitchy (“off with their heads”) drag queen who, “actually has a heart of gold.” The characters are all stereotypes that you’ll find within the Sydney gay scene and Wonderland is the club, “where up is down and sometimes sideways” – the setting of a night of wild entertainment, outlandish costumes and erotic comedy. The show is also accompanied by something you wouldn’t normally receive as you chase the white rabbit on Oxford St: a 3-course degustation dinner.
Feb 21–Mar 2, Slide Nightclub Darlinghurst, $70, 89151899, slide.com.au
